THE 
 
 ROSE-COLOURED 
 ROOM 
 
 MAUDE LITTLE
 
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 333 
 

 
 The Rose-coloured 
 Room
 
 The Rose-coloured 
 Room 
 
 by 
 
 MAUDE LITTLE 
 
 Author of " A Woman on the Threshold " 
 " The Children's Bread " 
 &c. 
 
 New York: Charles Scribner's Sons 
 
 London & Toronto : Sidgwick & Jackson Ltd 
 1915
 
 PRINTED AT THE COMPLETE PRESS 
 
 WEST NORWOOD 
 
 W>NDON
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 CHAP. PAGB 
 
 I. THE COMING 1 
 
 II. THE IMPRISONED PRINCESS 50 
 
 III. THE BUGLES OF THE CHAMPIONS 86 
 
 IV. THE HEDGE OF THORNS 121 
 V. THE HAPPY WARRIOR 157 
 
 VI. THE WHITE STUDIO 227 
 
 VII. THE ROSE-COLOURED ROOM 275 
 
 2136771
 
 TO 
 "THE OTHERS"
 
 PERSONS 
 
 MICHAEL QUENTIN, a rich young man. 
 
 RACIE MOORE, his friend, a journalist. 
 
 MRS. TRATHBYE, an Irish widow of good family. 
 
 DRUSILLA 
 
 ESSIE 
 
 her daughters. 
 
 KATHLEEN 
 
 Miss CAROLINE TRATHBYE, her sister-in-law. 
 
 ALEXANDER COWIE, a young doctor. 
 
 THOMAS PATULLO, a tutor. 
 
 GRACE MORLAND, a teacher of gymnastics. 
 
 MRS. WYLIE, Michaefs landlady. 
 
 A POOR IRISHWOMAN. 
 
 A LITTLE BOY. 
 
 COWIE'S MOTHER AND SISTERS. 
 
 Various Members of the Eire Club, Michael's Servants, etc. 
 
 The Scene is laid at Glasgow and at Michael Quentin'* 
 country house on the Ayrshire coast. 
 
 The Time is the present day. 
 
 viii
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 THE COMING 
 
 MICHAEL QUENTIN and Racie Moore were drinking 
 coffee in the garden. The honey-coloured glow of the 
 lamp, standing on a little table, illumined the forms of 
 the two young men up to their collars : their faces 
 were in darkness and behind them and above them 
 there were the deeply coloured dim masses of trees and 
 the moonless night sky. The foliage stirred faintly ; 
 and the soft incessant sounds of the sea came from a 
 distance. Michael and Racie could see on their left 
 a broken row of radiant oblong windows and the vague 
 pale form of the house itself. 
 
 " It's a beautiful night," Michael said, speaking 
 with an intonation which subtly suggested the current 
 of Irish blood. 
 
 Racie was silent. 
 
 " It's a beautiful night," Michael repeated. . . . 
 " Lovely." His voice was insistent. 
 
 " I thought every night was beautiful to you," 
 Racie said with a gently mirthful irony. 
 
 " Yes," Michael said. ..." Isn't it a beautiful 
 night ? " 
 
 Racie swirled towards him in a sudden keen in- 
 quiry. 
 
 " Why do you say that ? " In animation Racie's 
 voice had the same fluctuations as Michael's, and his 
 articulation, like Michael's, was throaty. 
 
 " Because it is a beautiful night," Michael said with 
 a gurgle of laughter. 
 
 " I wish you wouldn't be so Maeterlinckish," Racie 
 
 A
 
 2 THE ROSE-COLOURED ROOM 
 
 said ..." and so insincere. You meant that the 
 night was beautiful in a quite special sense, I suppose. 
 You spoke about its beauty on purpose as a prelude 
 to something you are going to say, I suppose." 
 
 " I don't know that I'll say anything," Michael said. 
 
 " As you will," Racie replied. He set down his 
 coffee-cup and accepted the cigar that Michael offered 
 him. The match-blaze, palpitating hi the drowsily 
 moving air, made a variable blotch of red-gold bright- 
 ness, including part of Racie's face, sheening the skin 
 of his nose and lips and glinting in his dark eyes. 
 
 " I'll tell you," said Michael. ..." I'll tell you. 
 No, thanks, I've given up smoking. . . . This night 
 seems more beautiful than any night I've seen. All 
 the world seems different somehow. Don't be afraid. 
 I'm not going to say something about the livelier 
 emerald twinkling in the grass, or the purer sapphire 
 melting into the sea." 
 
 " Well, you might as well," Racie said. " What 
 you have said is so commonplace . . . and what 
 you've done is also frightfully commonplace." 
 
 " Done ? " Michael said. " Done ! " he repeated 
 on his top note, soaring from inquiry to indignation. 
 " Who said I'd done ann'thing ? " 
 
 " How Irish we are ! " Racie said, derisive ; and 
 Michael flushed angrily in the darkness. " I think 
 you overdo it," Racie went on. " You won't get a 
 real Celt to be quite as Celtic as you are." 
 
 " I am a real Celt," Michael said solemnly. " My 
 father was a Kerryman. My mother was Scottish 
 with a good deal of Highland blood in her. We'll not 
 discuss it," he added in a hurt, haughty tone ; and a 
 silence followed. Once or twice Racie moved rest- 
 lessly in his chair and breathed forcibly so that his red
 
 THE COMING 3 
 
 cigar-end started into brightness. Michael, sitting 
 erect, was watching three moths swooping and 
 skirmishing round the lamp -glow. 
 
 " Well ? " Racie said, with the faintest touch of 
 sheepishness. " Well, Mick ? " 
 
 Michael's dark shape relaxed. 
 
 " Tell us the thing you haven't done ? " Racie 
 asked, reassuming the tone in which he habitually 
 addressed Michael. It was a mingling of toleration, 
 banter, and impatience. Racie's voice, unstimulated 
 by any kind of emotion, was a very quiet one ; it kept 
 on a few middle notes and its monotony suggested 
 fatigue. 
 
 " I haven't fallen in love," Michael said, a laugh 
 intermingling with his speech. " Sorry. You'd have 
 liked some definite copy, I know." 
 
 " Don't be bitter," Racie said. " I couldn't make 
 acceptable copy out of you now. The Glasgow Evening 
 Mercury doesn't take an interest in you any longer. 
 People are tired of you and your queer house now. 
 We'd give you a paragraph if you died or married 
 that's all. Even the Woman's Column leaves you 
 and your house alone." 
 
 " I'm not interesting to women," Michael said 
 huffily. " I wish you wouldn't cough in that abomin- 
 able way. Papers like The Mercury do a lot to lower 
 the standards of womanhood and manhood. The 
 Woman's Column with its beastly advice, as if it were 
 the aim of every woman to catch a man. . . . You 
 know that sort of thing is a lie." In Racie's silence 
 Michael became aggressive. " It's a lie," he repeated. 
 " A woman doesn't go about, like Diogenes, looking 
 for a man. I've never seen any signs of it." 
 
 " You ! " Racie uttered, compunctious.
 
 4 THE ROSE-COLOURED ROOM 
 
 " Candidly now, have you ? " 
 
 " Of course," Racie said, and stopped, his face 
 slightly warm. He reflected that Michael had five 
 thousand a year and a wealth of delusions. A man 
 with so much money could afford them. Again and 
 again Racie had said to his own bitter chafing im- 
 patience that it was a mere waste of energy to try to 
 open the eyes of a man who, stumbling in darkness, 
 could afford to pay a surgeon for attendance to his 
 injuries. Racie had taken his cigar from his mouth to 
 utter his hopeless " Of course " : he replaced the cigar, 
 settled himself back in his chair, muttering, as a sort 
 of concession to his own irritation : " Oh, I don't 
 know, 'f course not ; I've no money." 
 
 " The Mercury's got into your blood and brain ! " 
 Michael said with a Celtic intensity. 
 
 " Quicksilver ? " Racie said. " Or my paper ? 
 That reminds me, Mick, if you want to say anything 
 or ann'thing (God bless ould Ireland !) better say it, 
 for I'll have to catch that ten-ten to Glasgow." 
 
 '* I've told Tosh we'll want the motor," Michael said, 
 nodding. " Half-past nine's lots of time. . . . When 
 I said things were changed I meant it. I can't tell 
 you anything, Racie, I don't know." 
 
 " Don't know ? " 
 
 ** I know nothing," Michael said, rocking his chair 
 on the turf. " Only, there's a change coming to me 
 . . . there's something coming. ... I don't know 
 what it is. It may be a revelation of God. It may 
 be Death. It may be human love." And at the last 
 name only Michael's voice quivered, and Racie was 
 shaken into a silence which was partly embarrassed, 
 but partly troubled. 
 
 In the deeply coloured mass of the trees and shrubs,
 
 THE COMING 5 
 
 on the left side of the pale uncertain shape of the house, 
 something was purring, as a tiger might purr in the 
 close-knit jungle under a sky unpierced by stars. 
 Presently the eyes of the brute shone out, yellow and 
 ray-streaming, and it came near and then went far off 
 again in a slow curving rush. Racie and Michael rose 
 and stood for a minute, reluctant, in the little pool of 
 brightness and lulling odours round which the moths 
 were wistfully flying. 
 
 " Funny thing," Racie said. " Funny you never 
 need to do a thing unless you like. You do all your 
 mortifying of the flesh voluntarily. I don't doubt 
 you think you do a lot." 
 
 " Rubbish," Michael said. ..." You're so ob- 
 stinately stupid in some things. I've never said any- 
 thing to lead you to suppose that I believed in morti- 
 fying the flesh. God made the flesh . . . only He 
 made the soul too. It must be easy to keep your flesh 
 in its right place once your soul has seen God." 
 
 " What's its right place ? " Racie asked. 
 
 " On its knees," Michael said, with that self- 
 conscious intensity of his. 
 
 Racie had a swift mental vision of the crucifix that 
 hung in the white studio in Michael's house ; a crucifix 
 of ivory and ebony, terrible, uncompromising, the 
 drooping, dying figure white against the austere black 
 of the cross. And under the rood, set on a white and 
 silver table, Michael always kept roses, crimson and 
 white : massed and tumbled as they were, they 
 touched the feet of the figure on the cross and seemed, 
 fantastically, to blossom from the red stigmata the 
 soul's joys flowering from the body's anguish. . . . 
 Michael Quentin could afford to have roses all the year 
 round. A ridiculous set piece altogether ; a thing
 
 6 THE ROSE-COLOURED ROOM 
 
 that Michael, meaning that men should not see, must 
 have actually designed to make an impression on God. 
 " Pour epater le bon Dieu ! " Racie said to himself, 
 humorous, in the dismal journalese of The Glasgow 
 Evening Mercury. . . . Well, no harm had been done 
 by the costly crucifix with its singular fashion of 
 glorifying the flesh that God had made. No harm had 
 been done by the roses, nor by the white studio and the 
 rest of the house. Michael Quentin had five thousand 
 a year, and might have done more evil had he taken 
 to philanthropy on a large scale. 
 
 They walked round the wide curve of the drive, the 
 shell with which it was strewn making a soft crushing 
 sound under their feet. In front of the house, in the 
 dim, vaguely edged wash of light, the colours of things 
 showed in subdued tones the dull blue-greens of 
 shrubs and trees, the grey-green of grass, the silvery 
 whiteness of the broken shell on the drive, the warmer 
 whitenesses of the steps, the porch, and house-front, 
 rather recently built and diapered now with a meagre 
 design of trained branches and stems. The motor 
 was clicking and purring. Tosh, with his splendid 
 shoulders, stood by it, saluting as they passed into the 
 house. 
 
 On the way to the station, which stood on the 
 Fauldstane road, Racie said : 
 
 " I suppose you will be in on Thursday night to the 
 meeting of the club ? " 
 
 " Yes," Michael said. " I'll see you there ? It's to 
 be old Patullo's paper, you know. I wonder what sort 
 of thing he'll do." There was a touch of uneasiness in 
 Michael's laugh the awkward attempt of an altruist, 
 self-defensive, to range himself with the majority who 
 smiled at old Patullo.
 
 THE COMING 7 
 
 Racie was sensitive to a false note in Michael : he 
 replied with a cold gravity : 
 
 " Patullo was a brilliant man, they say." 
 
 " Who ? " Michael exclaimed, astonished, com- 
 punctious ; swiftly apprehending piteousness in the 
 career of old Patullo, the coach, with his petunia nose, 
 his wet eyes, and tremulous movements. 
 
 " They," Racie said, with his quick guttural laugh. 
 
 The faltering talk yielded to silence. The motor 
 was running inland, climbing up and swooping down a 
 succession of slopes in the road that lay between the 
 wide palenesses of unreaped grain-fields and blossomy 
 meadows, intersected by hedgerows and walls, black in 
 the night. Often they passed a group of dark farm- 
 buildings, inset here and there with the golden oblongs 
 of lighted windows ; or a big cluster of trees, their 
 foliage swinging to a soft " hush-hush " and yielding 
 vegetable odours to the air. The swish and boom of 
 the sea was fainter and fainter to their ears ; at the 
 turning of corners the motor-horn twanked ; once 
 Tosh suddenly slowed down and laughed as the glare 
 showed two brown rabbits in the road. 
 
 Still silent, Michael and Racie strode along the 
 lonely station platform set in this country of fields and 
 farms. A mournful little wind from the sea was 
 blowing now, gently shaking dark shades over the 
 lower sky. A lamp-bearing porter, like a great glow- 
 worm, crossed the metals ; there was the clash of 
 signals. 
 
 " Coming," Racie said mechanically, in a town- 
 dweller's way of saying things that none desires to 
 hear nor to speak. 
 
 The train came and there was a shouting, a flaring of 
 lights, a clapping of doors. Racie, dark-eyed and
 
 8 THE ROSE-COLOURED ROOM 
 
 white-faced, in his crush hat and grey overcoat, 
 leaned from the window, shaking hands : the guard 
 waved his green flag, and stepped, with a railwayman's 
 admirable casualness, on to the out-going train. . . . 
 Michael was left on the platform, in the indigo dimness, 
 with the softly blowing breeze, the sparse golden lights, 
 the faltering sounds of the train's retreat, of its quick, 
 suddenly checked hoots, suggestive of some half- 
 uttered human emotion of mirth or grief. From the 
 country, blurring the blue-blackness of the June night 
 with the grey rising of its mists, there came that 
 mingling of noises that is like the breath, the stirring 
 of a great creature, lying cool and mysterious in its 
 sleep, but with the time of awakening always at hand. 
 The purple sky, too, seemed to thrill, expectant. 
 
 " Coming, sir ? " Tosh said with a humorous 
 patience with his employer's oddity, as Michael came 
 into the road. 
 
 " Coming," Michael answered, with delight in the 
 chance repetition of the appropriate word. He re- 
 peated it to himself as the motor ran homewards, 
 climbing and dipping, between the pallid fields and the 
 dark hedges. 
 
 " Coming . . . coming ..." 
 
 " Well then, I wonder what's coming," Michael said 
 to himself with an enjoying laugh, as his sense of 
 humour, like a will-o'-the-wisp, went scuttering across 
 the stage on which his egotism posed and pondered 
 and suffered. 
 
 II 
 
 Michael Quentin's house stood at a corner where the 
 road that ran inland to Fauldstane made an acute 
 angle with the sea-road : the house had consequently
 
 THE COMING 9 
 
 been named " The Corner House." The same rebel- 
 lion against the traditions of villadom as had led to the 
 choice of the simple name had regulated the building 
 of the house itself. It was a little house : set in its 
 twenty acres of greensward, gardens, and woodland, 
 it was a white cottage, hardly bigger than the two 
 white lodges at its western and northern gates. Two 
 gardeners, local men, dwelling in these white lodges, 
 had, during the eighteen months that had passed since 
 " The Corner House " was built, disseminated know- 
 ledge of Michael Quentin's eccentricities. But now 
 the gardeners almost took him and his house for 
 granted, and the tradesmen's carts passed in and out 
 at the northern gate with hardly the exchange of a jest. 
 As Racie had said, people had become accustomed to 
 Michael Quentin's funny house. His domestic ser- 
 vants, visiting friends in the neighbourhood, were only 
 now and then called upon to entertain a stranger with 
 a description of the interior of the crazy building ; and 
 sometimes a passenger, leaning over the railings of one 
 of the bright-funnelled panting steamers that issued 
 from the Firth of Clyde, would point to Michael's 
 place and say : 
 
 " That's Quentin's house. Oh, you must ! The 
 house that the papers made such fun of a year or two 
 ago ? " 
 
 If the subject were pursued, what followed was in- 
 coherent and tame ; for the truth is that there was 
 nothing really funny about Michael Quentin's house. 
 It was less ridiculous than thousands of houses which 
 are seriously built and bought and sold. It was by 
 dint of mere repetition that the western papers had 
 persuaded the public to accept the house as a joke. 
 It must have been a disappointment to those who went
 
 10 THE ROSE-COLOURED ROOM 
 
 to see it in the expectation of being amused : for it 
 was merely an innocent-looking white cottage, with a 
 door and seven windows at the front. A thin pattern 
 of rambler-rose blooms and branches was trailed 
 between the casements, austerely decorative as in a 
 Watts picture. Three broad steps led up to the door 
 and there was a simple porch ; and the door and porch, 
 like the house walls, were very white. The cottage 
 had two stories and the upper one was entirely oc- 
 cupied by the studio, the glass roof of which blazed in 
 the sunshine, or shimmered bluely through rains and 
 dimnesses. 
 
 This studio in itself was locally accepted as a sign 
 that Michael Quentin was " not quite all there." In 
 the first place, a man who neither photographed nor 
 painted did not need a studio, did he ? But the sin- 
 gularity of possessing a studio was lost sight of in the 
 amazing eccentricity of keeping the place locked, of 
 cleaning it himself, and of bringing fresh roses into it 
 every day. There were some who said that Michael 
 Quentin had had an unhappy love-affair, which had 
 somewhat unhinged his mind ; and that the white 
 studio was a kind of offering to the dead or lost 
 " young lady." But others, finding it improbable 
 that " he " would look at a woman, believed that the 
 studio was the temple of some weird religion which 
 was styled " Theosaphy." 
 
 The painters who had come down from the city to 
 decorate the house had, before leaving, made it public 
 that the studio was as white as snow from floor to 
 ceiling, and that each of the seven rooms on the ground 
 floor was done up in a different colour ; and these 
 statements were confirmed by Michael's indoor ser- 
 vants, Helen the housemaid, Muriel the parlourmaid,
 
 THE COMING 11 
 
 and Mattie the housekeeper and cook. As a local 
 woman, Mattie gave the feeling of the neighbourhood 
 pretty accurately when she said that there was no 
 harm in the seven colours on the ground floor, but 
 that a snow-white studio was going too far. 
 
 Another freak of the architect goaded by Michael 
 Quentin was this : there was no hall. You stepped 
 at once from the white porch, with its meagre twistings 
 of rambler-rose trails, into the central room, the largest 
 of the seven. It was green : a white staircase mounted 
 from it to the studio. Each of the seven rooms ex- 
 tended from the front of the house to the back, and 
 each had a back door of its own. Mattie gave her 
 word to any one to whom she was speaking that she 
 never knew who was in the house. How could she 
 know ? She admitted that the place was not draughty 
 which, she said, was a miracle and that the doors 
 and windows were well secured. The pity was that 
 there were so many of them ! Interiorly, each room 
 gave on the next, the green room in the centre of 
 necessity giving on two, the one yellow, the other blue. 
 The rest of the primary colours were represented in 
 the orange room, opening off the yellow, and the 
 indigo room, opening off the blue ; while at the ends 
 of the house were a violet guest-chamber and a red 
 kitchen and accessories. Every room had a deep 
 white frieze, and the dominant colour was additionally 
 tempered by notes leading to and from the hue that 
 prevailed in the neighbouring chamber. Thus, there 
 were green jars in the yellow room and a deep orange 
 curtain hung over its door giving on the orange room ; 
 while the orange room the dining-room with its 
 large admixture of white, had spots and sparks of 
 luminous reds reminiscent of the warm walls of the
 
 12 THE ROSE-COLOURED ROOM 
 
 kitchen glowing beyond. It had been Michael's in- 
 tention to offer this beautiful orange room to his 
 servants as a sitting-room (for in the night they slept 
 at the larger lodge with the head gardener and his 
 wife, a childless couple) but the women had declined, 
 Muriel and Helen smilingly, Mattie hotly. Sit in a 
 room of that colour ? She did not want to get " the 
 bile " as she remembered her mother once doing when 
 she sewed a yellow table-centre for a sale of work. It 
 added to Mattie's contempt, and to the languid amuse- 
 ment of the local people generally, that Michael 
 Quentin should alternate his passions for complete 
 solitude with fits of undignified loquacity in which he 
 would wander or sit up half the night with his friends 
 from town, or would walk and talk with any sort of 
 tramp or lost creature on the roads. " You never 
 know what he'll do next," Mattie said to the trades- 
 men at the door of the red-and-white kitchen. 
 
 Unconsciously, with the sure voice of the simple, 
 she struck the key-note of Michael's life. He himself 
 never knew what he was going to do next. 
 
 Michael's father had been a publican ; an Irishman 
 of the lower middle class, a Catholic, frugal, devout, 
 humble, industrious. He had toiled up from a little 
 clerking job in a restaurant at the age of fifteen, 
 through a travellership for a wine-merchant, to the 
 possession of a public-house of two public-houses 
 of five of half a score. At a hydropathic he had met 
 the Storringtons ; and had finally married Elsa Stor- 
 rington, a middle-class girl, eager, iron-willed, full of 
 sex feeling, full of ambition ; not pretty nor clever, 
 but with a cruel, haughty self-exaltation that secured 
 to her most of the privileges of beauty and brilliance. 
 She had dominated her husband, and vampirishly
 
 THE COMING 18 
 
 absorbed all that he offered her, always with that 
 terrible air of a woman assured of her right to take. 
 She mesmerised him into believing that she was, or had 
 been, a beauty, and mesmerised him and many others 
 into a faith in her connection with some noble English 
 family not any particular noble English family. 
 Quentin deferred to her on all points of social conduct, 
 listening patiently to her " tips " garnered from eti- 
 quette books and to her aggressively voiced wonder at 
 his ignorance of observances, the existence of which 
 she herself had learned a few hours before from the 
 current number of the Woman's Friend or the Social 
 Guide. . . . Michael was his mother's only child and 
 the victim of all her caprices, ignorances, and passions. 
 His father's domestic life was only a constant abdica- 
 tion of rights ; and the State, which came between the 
 little ragamuffin and the parents who wanted too often 
 to kick him, did not feel authorised to subject to 
 inquiry a home as brilliantly prosperous and respect- 
 able as the Quentins. Mrs. Quentin experimented on 
 Michael and no one asked her to show a licence. She 
 began to give the child reading lessons when he was 
 two and a half; when he was three she delighted 
 herself with giving him piano lessons, scolding savagely 
 when he wept, laughing sentimentally at the sight of 
 his doughy little hands trying to stretch over the keys. 
 When he was five she engaged a professional, an in- 
 ferior musician to whom she had taken a fancy, to 
 teach the unmusical Michael the violin. The futility 
 continued to absorb his energy for the next three or 
 four years when, tired of it, she buried it in the mass 
 of other subjects that she desired her son to learn. 
 Michael was plunged into the study of five foreign 
 languages, of which in maturity he retained only a few
 
 14 THE ROSE-COLOURED ROOM 
 
 fragments of vocabulary, a few oaths, a few lines of 
 verse, and a confused remembrance of vivid pictures, 
 huge compositions in which wild pigs ate acorns in 
 forests, peasants reaped fields, tourists climbed hills, 
 and mail-coaches, preceded by barking dogs, chased 
 motors through villages full of market-women, soldiers, 
 sailors, and firemen. Michael sampled many expensive 
 schools, in Scotland and in England. His mother 
 seldom allowed him to stay in a school for more than a 
 year : for she either quarrelled with one of his masters 
 or was disappointed because the family of one of his 
 schoolfellows had not encouraged a friendship. . . . 
 When Michael was seventeen, he was called home from 
 his last English school by the death of his father : his 
 mother, after some vaguely motived dwellings in 
 various towns, went to Oxford. Here Michael put in 
 two terms at the University ; then his mother, taking 
 a dislike to a colleague of his, took her son to Germany. 
 She died at Bonn, leaving Michael, aged twenty-two, 
 snatched out of a cloud of studies, dazed, ignorant, 
 uncouth, friendless. 
 
 Emerging slowly from the confusion of feelings 
 caused by his mother's death, and the intellectual con- 
 fusion of law business, Michael realised that he was 
 rich and in a sense at liberty. His mother who had 
 had absolute control of the family finances had left a 
 few legacies to societies and individuals, chiefly ser- 
 vants, but had made her son the heir of the bulk of 
 her wealth, on the condition that he did not go to live 
 in Ireland, but kept and built on the twenty acres of 
 land which she had recently bought in North Ayrshire, 
 her native place. Her last earthly ambition had been 
 to build a country house with an avenue, a garage, 
 and a tennis-court ; and, as her death had drawn
 
 THE COMING 15 
 
 nearer, she had been obsessed by visions of rose-alleys 
 and lawns, and of herself, surrounded by gold tea- 
 services, sandwiches, and strawberries, playing hostess 
 to a crowd of well-dressed people ; to the cruel 
 reluctant crowd of her long lonely imaginings the 
 elusive crowd of refined friends that had always melted 
 away at her eager approach. 
 
 She had divined in her son the growth of the defiance 
 that she aroused in all with whom she came into 
 intimate contact. In their rushings to and fro, their 
 social flounderings and helpless graspings at culture, 
 Michael's reverence for his mother had been fretted 
 away. He no longer subscribed to the dogmas of her 
 beauty and good breeding : he saw her every day more 
 surely as a stupid elderly woman, a trivial bully, with 
 a face ignobly lined. Her dress appeared to him un- 
 becoming : her self-styled English accent, in which he 
 had gloried in his childhood, was only the Scottish 
 variation of English spoken more loudly than was 
 usual. Her shame of his father's nationality, rela- 
 tions, and trade, became a thing for blushes : as were 
 her uneasiness in society, her dreads for him, her fur- 
 tive searchings in dictionaries and society papers, her 
 scrambling efforts to be the first to dissolve an ac- 
 quaintanceship, to utter a jeer or formulate a criticism. 
 He was revolted by her vindictiveness towards those 
 who had ignored or satirised her ; and her religious 
 observances, always in churches socially important, 
 jarred on him. He could not believe in their sin- 
 cerity ; and he was exasperated by her Sunday figure, 
 by the smugness of her kid gloves, by her drooped 
 eyelids and the folds that came in her chin as she 
 ostentatiously bowed and knelt. Late in her life, she 
 became an Episcopalian ; attracted by a handsome
 
 16 THE ROSE-COLOURED ROOM 
 
 curate, fancying a touch of piquancy in this less 
 popular form of worship ; observing holy-days, 
 scurrying, fussy and cross, to early Communion on 
 Easter morning, or, fur-swathed, driving to Christmas 
 Eve carol-singings. She affected to know nothing of 
 the habits of the Presbyterian sects, asking skittishly 
 if all Scottish churches were not much the same. 
 Michael could not have told what their differences 
 were : but he was chilled by his mother's religion of 
 social expediency, by her showy genuflexions, by her 
 bazaar committees, subscriptions, and squabbles. . . . 
 His love turned to the image of his father, a formerly 
 uncomprehended being, now radiant with the virtues 
 that this woman lacked. Michael's heart grew more 
 resentful of his mother's shame of her animus against 
 Ireland, against Romanists, even against " the trade." 
 In his childhood he had laughed at her caricatures of 
 his father's speech and manners ; a little later he had 
 winced ; then he had writhed and flushed. From 
 seeming pitiable, his father's figure had become toler- 
 able, then venerable. Michael began, surreptitiously, 
 to read Irish literature, he began to study Erse. He 
 paid secret visits to the theatres in which the Abbey 
 Theatre Company played on their visits to Scotland : 
 he went into chapels and sat dreaming through un- 
 comprehended beautiful masses : he crossed to Ireland 
 and contemplated a long visit, a final residence. It 
 was as if he were called by something that was further 
 back, yet more familiar, than the neglected figure of 
 his father. 
 
 Mrs. Quentin was in truth a stupid, elderly woman : 
 but her motherly feeling, the jealous sense that her son 
 was her possession, made her aware of the graduai 
 decay of Michael's filial loyalty. Before her death she
 
 THE COMING 17 
 
 was even a little conscious that he was ashamed of her. 
 She was tortured by a jealousy of her husband's 
 humble figure with his lowly virtues his charity, his 
 humility, and industry, his exquisite bodily asceticism, 
 his devoutness which recked not of kid gloves and 
 bazaar committees. She feared him, so long after his 
 death, and, enraged, she struggled against that 
 triumphant humbleness. The condition which her 
 will imposed on her son was the last effort of her 
 material force against the psychic forces of her hus- 
 band and his nation. She hoped that, in chaining 
 Michael's body to these acres on the Ayrshire coast, 
 she might prevent his spirit from wandering ; she had 
 worded her will so that, read in the emotional atmo- 
 sphere which hangs about a house where a death has 
 happened, it might appeal to Michael's heart rather 
 than to his common-sense ; for the poor woman was 
 beginning to surmise that Michael's common-sense 
 was not a thing on which one could count. 
 
 In fearing that he might be carried away by feeling 
 to the renouncement of his fortune, she may have done 
 Michael an injustice ; for he was fond of money, as 
 romantic people usually are ; and he had been accus- 
 tomed to meagre allowances, arbitrarily bestowed and 
 withdrawn, so the prospect of handling and spending 
 at his pleasure was fresh and alluring. Yet it was 
 merely natural that his dominant motive in acquies- 
 cing in the conditions of the will should be a mingling 
 of feelings that passed for filial love pity for his 
 mother's desperate failing grip on his life, regret that 
 he was not really sorry that she was dead, emotions of 
 early admiration and faith galvanised into life by 
 memory. He accepted the twenty acres and still in 
 obedience to the will began to consider the building 
 
 B
 
 18 THE ROSE-COLOURED ROOM 
 
 of a house : but Mrs. Quentin had stipulated nothing 
 about the time of erection, and Michael let two years 
 wander by before he began to build. 
 
 His mother's death had not brought him complete 
 enfranchisement. He must still be in a measure what 
 she had made him not at all what she had desired to 
 make him, but the result of the struggle between her 
 vague violent wishes and the other forces within and 
 outside of himself. His mother's grip on his life, 
 feeble and frantic with the fear of losing hold, had still 
 been potent to retard, to make his progress timid and 
 uncertain ; and, after her death, Michael found it 
 difficult to realise that he was unburdened and free. 
 He still must move fearfully and confusedly for a time : 
 but gradually there grew on him a sense of the splen- 
 dour of the many high roads and by-ways of life. He 
 was free to rush along any he chose ! But this very 
 consciousness of their wonder and of how much time 
 he had wasted inert, having no knowledge of them, 
 increased his aimlessness. He wanted to do so much 
 that he did not know where to begin ; and the old 
 timidity, the gawky self-distrust which was the result 
 of his mother's atmosphere of competition, made it 
 difficult for him to do anything at all. 
 
 He visited Ireland in the company of Racie Moore, 
 whose acquaintance he had made at a Socialist meeting 
 in Glasgow. Mrs. Quentin's will did not forbid visits 
 to Ireland ; and after the silent Racie, with his air of a 
 faint surprise, had gone back to The Glasgow Evening 
 Mercury, Michael remained for some months in the 
 west, seeking the things that he had read and dreamed, 
 and such is the power of faith finding some of them. 
 He came back to Scotland with an extended Irish 
 vocabulary and with an affected increase of the vocal
 
 THE COMING 19 
 
 rise-and-fall that he had inherited from his father. In 
 Glasgow he became a member of a small eclectic 
 Socialist society ; but it turned on him because, in 
 conformity to his mother's example, he supposed that 
 influence could be acquired by offering to pay for 
 things. He joined a literary society in which he made 
 no friends and not even enemies. Then he entered 
 Glasgow University, where, during two sessions, he 
 intensely studied science. The subject of colour had 
 always interested him : now for a time it enthralled 
 him. He thought of making a book, in which he 
 should consider colour chemically, aesthetically, and 
 ethically ; and it was with a mingling of disappoint- 
 ment and timid relief that he discovered that people 
 had already published books on the subject. He con- 
 tinued to experiment in the effects of colours on his 
 own character, and to dream of a world regenerated 
 by the wise distribution of the hues of the rainbow. 
 He had his rooms repeatedly painted in different 
 colours ; then, with a keen joy, he conceived the idea of 
 building a house which should be coloured to minister 
 to his various emotional needs and to assist his in- 
 tellectual and moral development. The twenty acres 
 in North Ayrshire and the conditions of his mother's 
 will ceased to be a wrong. Michael fastened on the 
 subject of architecture, came and went excitedly with 
 young Rollo, the architect whom Racie had intro- 
 duced to him. 
 
 It was not till the plan of the seven coloured rooms 
 was developed that Michael haltingly spoke of the 
 white studio. He had felt afraid that Rollo would 
 laugh ; and it was with a delighted amazement that 
 he found that Rollo was touched and impressed. 
 Rollo told Michael that he himself had for long been a
 
 20 THE ROSE-COLOURED ROOM 
 
 student of the ethical significance of colour ; and he 
 grasped with a wonderful sympathetic readiness at 
 Slichael's furtive ideas. They spoke shyly of purity 
 and of the aids afforded by religions ; and Michael ex- 
 plained that he was not a Roman Catholic, that his 
 sense of humour, or his modern complexity, stood in 
 the way ; but that the beautiful religion of his father's 
 people had a stronghold somewhere in his heart, that 
 he was building up for himself a faith which accepted 
 much of the mysticism of the Roman Church while 
 rejecting what was gross or inhuman. 
 
 Rollo nodded ; agreeing that agnosticism was an 
 old-fashioned thing and rotten. A man needed to 
 search for God : it was the language of Michael and 
 Rollo almost stated fine fun to search for God. An 
 adventure ! Rollo was eager about Michael's idea of 
 studying and praying hi a white studio. But when the 
 house was finished and he was permitted to enter the 
 decorated snowy room, he pointed to the crimson 
 roses below the crucifix. 
 
 " Well . . ." Michael said, " it's the most beautiful 
 kind. . . . The stigmata are red if you come to that. 
 It's the colour that means love." 
 
 When they were leaving the house, Rollo gazed like 
 one seeing visions and asked : 
 
 " Why don't you have a rose-coloured room ? You 
 could have it added." 
 
 " I don't want it," Michael said in an angry surprise. 
 
 Rollo apologised. . . . He was known to be con- 
 sumptive as well as slightly crazy ; and he died 
 shortly afterwards. It was just Michael Quentin's 
 luck, for he had felt that he and Rollo were going to 
 understand each other always. 
 
 Racie Moore . . . was different. Yet he and
 
 THE COMING 21 
 
 Michael went to and fro together. If Michael wanted 
 Racie he always found him : if he called to him Racie 
 always came. The thought had come to Michael that, 
 though he might never use his wealth for the liberation 
 of Ireland, as he had long ago dreamed of doing, he 
 might still find a patriotic labour. Glasgow was full 
 of poor Irish, distressed, toiling, drunken, criminal. 
 Michael had seen glimpses of their lives when he was 
 going about with Racie, who was writing special slum- 
 ming articles for The Weekly Mercury. And there were 
 other Irish aliens, not distressed nor drunken, whom 
 he might be the means of bringing together. Suddenly, 
 as was his way, he dreamed of a return, like the fabled 
 return of the Jews to Zion. A return of all Ireland 
 to the pure faith of the old saints, then a return of all 
 the world, led back by Ireland ! to God. In that 
 humble island there sprang and blossomed the virtues 
 that the proud world forgot simplicity, chastity, 
 poverty, gentleness, the endurance of scorn. His 
 father, from being a round-shouldered man with an 
 extensive knowledge of whiskies, had been glorified 
 into an epitome of all those virtues, the symbol of the 
 glorious Ireland to come, with her poetry and drama, 
 her humane and rational rule, her free and great 
 Church with tolerance for every doubt and reverence 
 for every rule. Michael, on his knees before the 
 crucifix, vowed that he would keep his life pure for 
 Ireland's service ; that his friendships should be 
 staunch and sane ; that if human love came into his 
 life it should be holy in its beauty and joy, as those 
 roses at the foot of the cross. . . . 
 He founded the Eire Club.
 
 22 THE ROSE-COLOURED ROOM 
 
 in 
 
 Michael came in out of the warm moistness of the 
 night, and, with a gesture to the hoistman, ran upstairs. 
 On the topmost landing an open door showed about a 
 score of persons assembled in a room where there were 
 gas-lights and benches and a green wooden table with 
 a carafe and glass upon it. 
 
 On the last page of the green syllabus of the Eire 
 Club, under the title " Objects of the Club," there were 
 printed two items : 
 
 " To form a fraternity of Celtic men and women, 
 resident in Glasgow, regardless of social distinctions, 
 or differences in religion and politics. 
 
 " To study Celtic literature, especially the poetry 
 and myths of ancient Ireland." 
 
 Starting the club, Michael had wished to bear all the 
 expenses himself, making subscriptions optional ; but 
 Racie Moore had represented to him, with so fair a 
 show of reason, the degrading effects of such a policy, 
 that Michael had yielded to the suggestion of a tax of 
 two shillings on each member. 
 
 " You won't get the right sort of people without a 
 subscription," Racie said. " The right sort of people 
 like paying for things even when they can't." 
 
 " You're a fearful lunatic," Michael said with a 
 laugh ; but, on Racie's declaration of seriousness, had 
 assented with the puzzled air that implies doubts in 
 reserve. . . . Michael had inserted notices in the 
 prominent Glasgow papers, summoning " those in- 
 terested " to his help in forming the club : he had 
 wished to advertise for " men and women of Irish 
 blood," but Racie had said : 
 
 " Better not be too particular about the blood.
 
 THE COMING 28 
 
 Take any one that comes then you'll have a chance 
 of getting hold of the right sort of people." 
 
 This was the sixth time that the club had met 
 leaving out of count the preliminary business meeting. 
 Michael, who was chairman, sat down in his place at 
 the green table, and, gazing at the people in the 
 benches, tried to keep himself from realising his failure. 
 The right sort of people ? . . . He had visualised a 
 little ring of poetry lovers, of fellow-countrymen and 
 patriots, without hate ; the poor and the well-to-do 
 united by a common passion and faith. 
 
 Now he sat in his place at the green table and gazed 
 at the people in the benches. The right sort of people ? 
 . . . Were these people really interested in Celtic 
 literature ? In literature of any sort ? In anything ? 
 . . . Oh, stodge ! Suddenly brave, with a scornful 
 courage created by impatience, Michael tore away the 
 self-pitying illusion that there was in the present mem- 
 bership of the Eire Club any germ which could develop 
 into the Eire Club of his dreams. It was grotesque, 
 but it was true, that those people had not the dimmest 
 conception of his thought in founding the club. At 
 his first interview with " those interested " who had 
 responded to his advertisement, he had felt this want 
 of comprehension, but had stubbornly struggled 
 against it, persuading himself that out of the ruck, with 
 their blank eyes and irrelevant talk, the right sort of 
 people were bound to emerge. He had made a speech 
 on that first night and had felt, such was the glow in 
 his heart, that they must come to understand each 
 other. He remembered the awkward ashamed looks 
 and coughs, the relief with which they had started to 
 go home. . . . Oh, stodge ! They had not under- 
 stood.
 
 24 THE ROSE-COLOURED ROOM 
 
 Michael felt that Racie Moore was glancing at him. 
 As secretary, Racie sat on Michael's left ; a pale young 
 man with thick dark hah 1 . His long-lashed, full-lidded 
 eyes were usually downcast ; and looking at his profile 
 as he sat at the table, Michael's thoughts often wan- 
 dered to those mysterious side-faces in Egyptian 
 drawings. Racie's air was not so much that of one 
 who has become tired of life as of one who believes that 
 getting tired is not worth while. Now he just glanced 
 up out of the corner of his eye. 
 
 " Ladies and gentlemen," Michael said, rising, " Mr. 
 Patullo is going to read a paper to us to-night." 
 He looked down at old Thomas Patullo, the treasurer, 
 who sat on his right. " I'm sure we'll all have great 
 pleasure in listening to Mr. Patullo," Michael said with 
 a nervous shake of his head, and speaking without veri- 
 similitude. " His paper's about our national poet, 
 O'Reilly. Uh ! . . . Mr. Patullo, as I dare say many 
 of you know, is the son of an Irish mother and a 
 Scottish father. My own mother was Scottish and my 
 father Irish. But I have always felt, as I said on the 
 night of our first meeting, that the Irish half of me is 
 somehow stronger, more alive, more real " 
 
 " The better half," old Patullo put in, and there was 
 a stodgy laugh. 
 
 At the interruption, Michael's mind swerved. He 
 stammered, for he had a slight impediment which had 
 been neglected in his childhood, owing to his mother's 
 quarrels with the doctors ; and it beset him when he 
 was nervous. 
 
 " Uh uh I said then and I say it again," Michael 
 went on, " we don't want to remember we're Irish for 
 any political reasons " 
 
 " Hear, hear ! " came from a man on the back seat.
 
 THE COMING 25 
 
 Several persons turned and stared unpleasantly at 
 him. 
 
 " Uh ! any political reasons," Michael said. " What 
 our Irish club I should say our Celtic club has got 
 to do is not to look back for the wrongs and miseries of 
 the past, but for the things in the past that are glorious 
 and beautiful and eternal ; and to look forward, too, 
 into the future, and see how these eternities join the 
 past and the future into one. It isn't just for Ire- 
 land's own sake we're to do this. Our effort to keep 
 up the feeling of our nationality isn't the narrow thing 
 it seems. It has a wider significance a great, eternal 
 meaning. You remember long ago it was to Ireland 
 that the saints and mystics came with the beliefs that 
 were to change the Western world. Can something of 
 the same kind not happen over again to-day ? Are 
 there not signs of it ? I mean it's like this. Some 
 people fear that the world's faith its power of believ- 
 ing in God is about played out. If that were so, all 
 the poetry would be gone out of the world, for men 
 
 can't make poetry without gods " The glow came 
 
 back to Michael's heart, it seemed again possible that 
 he should make these people understand him. " Are 
 there not signs in the Ireland of to-day of a bright 
 future of a new race of men of the coming back of 
 our undeveloped past ? The gods are getting into 
 communication with men again the great God with 
 His legions of angels and saints, who are the lesser gods. 
 You may hope that the thing will be done by religion ; 
 or by art ; they are only different forms of the same 
 thing our struggle upwards to God, His struggle 
 downwards to us ; our eternal need to get to God, 
 and His eternal need to get to us. ... " 
 
 " It's mysticism he's talking now," a red-faced,
 
 26 THE ROSE-COLOURED ROOM 
 
 glistening-eyed woman, stout and stooping, whispered 
 to her neighbour. " Mysticism." 
 
 " Ang ? " the other uttered, bending towards her ; 
 inquisitive, lean, in dejected blacks and a sable necklet 
 reeking of camphor tar. 
 
 " Mysticism. . . . He's talking mystic doctrines- 
 allegories." 
 
 The woman in black nodded rapidly several times, 
 shaking the fold of skin under her chin. 
 
 " He's a son of Quentin the publican," she said. 
 The gross red-faced woman's face was suddenly vivi- 
 fied ; the two looked at each other with understand- 
 ing : they met on the common ground of physical 
 gossip, and the red-faced woman, relieved, turned 
 from the attempt to follow Michael's speech. 
 
 " You know yon big public-house at the corner of 
 Mertoun and Buglass streets ? " the black-dressed 
 woman whispered bustlingly. " Yes yes," she 
 nodded, and the fold of discoloured skin hung more 
 slackly for a moment. " It's funny to see the son 
 coming out in this line. He was at the College here 
 with my nephew." 
 
 " Indeed ? " the red-faced woman said cordially ; 
 breathing asthmatically, sitting hunched up in her 
 yellow coat and a toque of pheasant skins, bald here 
 and there. 
 
 " He wasn't considered at all clever either," the 
 black-dressed woman said with a roguish air. " And 
 he was terribly faddy. Oh, it was just ivery fad under 
 the sun, my nephew says ; and off wi' the old fad 
 on wi' the " 
 
 " New," the red-faced woman suggested. 
 
 " Ay. . . . He wasn't just over popular among the 
 lads by what my nephew says ; he'd a queer sort of
 
 THE COMING 27 
 
 manner, kind of, and kept hisself to hisself . . . . More 
 money than he knows what to do with. . . . The 
 father was one of the Quentins of Belfast and Dublin, 
 
 the whisky people " The black-dressed woman 
 
 uttered a contemptuous little laugh. " And the mother 
 was one of the Carries, the shortbread people, so she'd 
 bring something." As the black-dressed woman 
 made the last statement her touch lacked sureness. 
 
 " Whisky and shortbread," gurgled the red-faced 
 woman, and they shook with laughter. 
 
 " He's a house down at Fauldstane," the black- 
 dressed woman said. 
 
 " Indeed ? I know Fauldstane very well very well 
 indeed, though it's a good few years since I've been 
 there." 
 
 " You don't I " the black-dressed woman exclaimed. 
 " Now isn't that strange ? Isn't it strange how 
 you " 
 
 " Come across people," the red-faced woman offered. 
 
 " Ay." The black-dressed woman nodded zestfully. 
 " Well, I've never seen the house, but my nephew has. 
 Kooogh ! There was a lot about it in the papers at the 
 time he was building it some very smart verses about 
 it in The Mercury. I must say I like The Mercury. 
 It's such a bright, chatty little paper to " 
 
 " Take up. But what's particular about the 
 house ? " 
 
 " It's a daft-like thing," the black-dressed woman 
 said, bitterly contemptuous. She repelled the stare of 
 a twisting indignant man on the bench in front of her. 
 The red-faced woman, less gallantly hostile to the 
 speaker, moved uneasily. " The house is at a corner 
 where the top of yon road that runs down to the 
 sea joins the main road," the black-dressed woman
 
 28 THE ROSE-COLOURED ROOM 
 
 whispered. " It's new built and they say ivery room's 
 a different colour. There's a rid room and a blue room 
 and a yellow room and a pink room and one that's pure 
 white. He'll need to wipe his shoes ang ? Kooogh ! 
 I suppose there's a heliotrope room, too." 
 
 At this jest the two women, cowering, shook with 
 laughter. Two men turned with gasps of inarticulate 
 protest. The black-dressed woman put a squeezed-up 
 handkerchief to her mouth and eyes. 
 
 " Now you're behaving very badly," she said archly. 
 She went on with a serious air : " He's a motor-car 
 and a splendid big garden . . . grounds. Lots of the 
 young ladies '11 have their eyes on him." 
 
 The red-faced woman's glistening eyes travelled 
 about the room, noting the female faces and figures. 
 With no obvious reason they paused, vaguely antago- 
 nistic in expression, on a young woman who sat on a 
 front bench facing the right side of the platform. 
 
 For no obvious reason : for this woman had neither 
 beauty nor the air of suggesting that she possessed it. 
 She sat in rather a slouching loose-limbed way, and 
 wore a black straw hat and a coat of mole fur over a 
 frock of some thin palely-coloured stuff. Her fine 
 eyes were gazing steadily towards the platform. . . . 
 The red-faced woman's glance left her, returned to her. 
 
 " Who's she ? " the red-faced woman whispered. 
 
 " It's Miss Morland," the woman in black said. 
 " She's a gym. teacher. He " slightingly signify- 
 ing Michael " employs her in some sort of fancy 
 night-classes he has for the poor Irish in the slums . 
 she teaches them songs and games and so on : he pays 
 her a good wage for it too, I believe. Fancy paying a 
 woman to teach kiddies to play theirselfs ! Fooof ! 
 Hard enough to teach them to do their work, I'd think.
 
 THE COMING 29 
 
 . . . She used to be a school-teacher, but she gave it up 
 and went in for gym. when it first got to be so much the 
 thing here. . . . Oh, she's not that young no. . . . 
 I've been thinking of joining one of her ladies' classes 
 myself to see if it'll do anything for a digestive 
 trouble I've got. . . ." 
 
 " May I ask if you're Irish ? " the red-faced woman 
 said humbly, after a mysterious linking of ideas. 
 
 The black-dressed woman smiled in a kind of 
 annoyed derision, twisting her head sideways. 
 
 " No-o. My mother's Highland, so I suppose I've 
 a right to call myself a Celt." 
 
 " I am Irish myself partly," the red-faced woman 
 said, propitiating. 
 
 " No, are you ? " There was a generous surprise in 
 the black-dressed woman's voice. " Now, I niver 
 could tell from your speech though there's something 
 about the eyes ..." 
 
 " I've lived in Glasgow since I was four years old," 
 the red-faced woman said with a sigh, rippled by a 
 foolish little laugh. ..." I just saw one of the meet- 
 ings advertised and came along to see what sort of 
 thing it was. I've always taken an interest in any- 
 thing occult." 
 
 The black-dressed woman nodded hurriedly, with 
 no desire to know the meaning of the word. 
 
 " There's a kind of quickness in the Irish," she said. 
 " A humourousness. It's what they call the Celtic 
 Spirit. . . . We Scotch people as a rule are more slow 
 and solid . . . more ..." 
 
 " Reserved," the red-faced woman contributed. 
 The other nodded repeatedly and vivaciously. 
 
 " Ay ... we Scotch people don't say all we've got 
 to say to strangers. We take longer to make friends
 
 30 THE ROSE-COLOURED ROOM 
 
 and we're more cautious about speaking out our minds 
 . . . making remarks on folks . . . afraid of being 
 hauled up for it. ... Kooogh ! You can always rely 
 on a Scotch body . . . hearty and homely. The 
 Irish are more excitable more treacherous in a way, 
 I think. . . ." 
 
 The lean woman's noddings shook her speech into 
 inarticulateness. Glances stole in her direction from 
 the sitting people who represented the mercurial Irish 
 nation. 
 
 " I sometimes think that Ireland has been kept as 
 she is poor and ignorant and unsuccessful in material 
 things because she's been chosen for this mission," 
 Michael said, struggling physically to make his voice 
 audible above the loudening talk in the benches, 
 struggling mentally to break through the hard shells of 
 indifference which isolated the minds of these people. 
 " To remind us the poetry in the world now is the voice 
 of God that speaks to the outcast among people and 
 nations. Perhaps prosperous and well-educated coun- 
 tries cannot be prayerful and simple : they lose the 
 power to wonder and believe. Revelations were 
 generally made to people who hadn't much to stand 
 between them and eternity not much material stuff 
 nor intellectual stuff nothing to stop their ears with 
 dust or to harden their hearts with pride. The sham- 
 rock lies close to the ground : it hasn't thorns like the 
 rose it can't wound like the thistle. Perhaps it's by 
 reason of this humbleness that Ireland has been chosen 
 as the place from which the light is to come again as it 
 did in the old days. The light of faith and purity and 
 ove : the light in which we shall see, not only our 
 countrymen but all our fellow-men, and shall recognise 
 the truth that we are all parts of one another and that
 
 THE COMING 31 
 
 we cannot wound a fellow-man without hurting our- 
 selves and wronging God. . . ." 
 
 " He's a blether," the black-dressed woman said. 
 
 " Even the group of us here," Michael continued, 
 " can do much to keep alive in our hearts and in the 
 lives of our poorer countrymen exiled here the image of 
 the old Eire, the beloved of the gods, the archetype of 
 nations ; we may do something much to restore a 
 faith and interest in the things called supernatural 
 to fight against the deadening power of materialism 
 to bring back the knowledge and trust, the beauty 
 and simplicity, of the times when the gods were not 
 ashamed to eat with men and animals and the ' good 
 people ' had no fear of them." 
 
 Michael's face was lighted by the joy of his own 
 thoughts : it seemed to him that they must be quite 
 plain to at least some of those present. He stood, 
 bending forwards, both hands on the table. There 
 was a flash from a fine diamond on his finger and the 
 two gossiping women looked at each other and nodded. 
 Michael's hair was of a bright yellow-brown. As he 
 spoke a flush came into his face, the hues of his lips 
 and eyes deepened : but a lock of the strongly coloured 
 hair, straying on his forehead, emphasised a glazy blue- 
 whiteness of skin which was, normally, characteristic 
 of his whole face. 
 
 There was a murmur in a deep male voice of : "I 
 
 should like to ask him " Michael's eyes flashed 
 
 into those of the speaker, who blushed. He was a 
 young man in blue serge and yellow boots. A saucy 
 little smile peeped out from under the plump little dark 
 moustache which, contrasting with the smooth pink- 
 ness of his cheeks, gave a suggestion of waxworks. 
 
 " Y yes," Michael faltered. " You want to ask
 
 32 THE ROSE-COLOURED ROOM 
 
 something, Mr. . . . ? Please do. Please all remem- 
 ber I don't want these meetings to be formal more 
 like talks between friends. . . ." 
 
 The young man's blush intensified and some ner- 
 vousness mingled with the impudence of his smile. 
 
 " Cowie's my name," he said. " Dr. Alexander 
 Cowie." He spoke slowly in his deep voice and with 
 that air of claiming general attention which charac- 
 terises the wit of a debating society. The people on 
 the benches, half roused, were waiting. 
 
 " Well, Mr. Chairman," the young man said, " I 
 couldn't help wondering while I was listening to you 
 you'll excuse me putting the question and you'll 
 understand, I hope, that it's put in no spirit of opposi- 
 tion . . ." Michael bowed solemnly, flushing at the 
 flare of all those eyes, turned, with a sort of slow 
 suddenness, on his face. They seemed to him like the 
 eyes of reptiles, curious, yet half lethargic, coldly 
 hostile. "Thanks," Cowie said. " Well, Mr. Chairman, 
 thinks I, listening to you I wonder if the Chairman 
 believes in fairies." 
 
 There was a kind of jerk in the mental atmosphere 
 of the room ; then an outburst of laughter. 
 
 " I don't know," Michael said, angry and hurt. 
 " Why shouldn't I ? " His eyes defied those of Cowie, 
 which were full of a genuine amusement. " I suppose 
 most of you here are Christians ? " Michael said. 
 " You believe in angels ? " 
 
 " Well, with the ladies here I don't see how we can 
 help ourselves," Cowie said. 
 
 Loud laughter. Since the founding of the Eire 
 Club the members had not been united by an im- 
 pulse so vivid and so common. People, with shining 
 eyes and open mouths, looked into the faces of
 
 THE COMING 33 
 
 their neighbours, then leaned forward peering at 
 Cowie. 
 
 " Oh, he's too comical ! " the red-faced woman said. 
 She added with a strange simpering consciousness : 
 " He's a good-looking young fellow." 
 
 Racie Moore looked up sideways at Michael, just 
 touched his elbow. Racie's lips suggested the word : 
 " Patullo." 
 
 " Yes," Michael murmured defiantly. He faced 
 Cowie, who had risen again to an accompaniment of 
 expectant mirth. 
 
 " Excuse me, Mr. Chairman, may I ask another 
 question ? " There was a smirk on Cowie's rose-red 
 lips under the toy-looking moustache. 
 
 " Certainly," Michael said in apprehension, his face 
 whitening. 
 
 " Well, it's this, Mr. Chairman if you'll excuse me 
 and believe that the question is put in quite a friendly 
 spirit. I couldn't help it arising in my mind while I 
 was sitting listening to you speaking so eloquently 
 about Ireland and about poverty and humility bring- 
 ing us nearer to" Cowie suddenly halted and, 
 
 flushing, said in a lowered voice " nearer to heaven. 
 ... I just dropped in about ten minutes ago and I 
 may have taken you up quite wrongly." 
 
 " Please ask your question. I want to make the 
 objects of the club quite clear to every one," Michael 
 said. His intention was to make Cowie feel that he was 
 ready to hear courteously anything that he had to say 
 and was animated by a pleasant, chairman-like desire 
 to put an end to his questioner's hesitation. But 
 Michael's dread was increased by the note of roguish- 
 ness in Cowie's tone. Michael felt certain from much 
 dismal experience that he was going to be wounded ; 
 
 c
 
 34 THE ROSE-COLOURED ROOM 
 
 and his voice winced and rasped. There was a move- 
 ment of indignation in the benches at the tone that 
 he was taking with this nice young man. 
 
 " Well, Mr. Chairman," Cowie said with a slow 
 pompous enjoyment of his own articulateness, " I 
 don't agree with you about poverty. I think we've 
 too much poverty, and that so far from bringing us 
 nearer to heaven it brings some of us nearer to the 
 other place Cowie paused for a little applaud- 
 ing murmur to rise and fall. " However, that is not 
 the point just now. I would like to know this : As 
 Ireland is so poor and humble and as poverty and 
 humility are such good things why you don't go back 
 to Ireland and be as poor and humble as you like ? " 
 
 Through the clash and jangle of laughter, Michael 
 was aware of Cowie' s voice saying something else. 
 The young man was still on his feet, blushing now and 
 half penitent. . . . Michael, grave, stood waiting with 
 a sick sensation till the noise was over. Racie, grave, 
 sat with unuplifted lids. Old Patullo, pausing now 
 and then to wipe his watering eyes, was scuffling paper. 
 It occurred to Michael, composedly, that Patullo 
 almost never laughed nor smiled. 
 
 " No doubt you've a good reason. I only thought 
 I might ask," Cowie's voice came. 
 
 "Exactly," Michael said. "Not at all. As a 
 matter of fact I gave my reason the first night we met." 
 
 " But I wasnie there," Cowie said quaintly ; and 
 the people laughed again, the black-dressed woman 
 
 stifling a rapturous : " Oh, isn't he ! " in her ball 
 
 of handkerchief. 
 
 " No ? " Michael said, calm now. " We can discuss 
 it another time. In the meantime I won't take up 
 any more of the evening. Perhaps I've taken too long
 
 THE COMING 85 
 
 already. ..." The people stodgily refrained from 
 contradiction and Michael faltered, " Uh ! I will 
 now call upon Mr. Patullo to give us his paper on 
 Terence O'Reilly, with whose poems " Michael's 
 glance scuttered along the benches and in his voice 
 there was a little crack which may have expressed 
 mirth or desperation or both "most of us are 
 familiar. . . ." 
 
 Michael's voice died away : he looked down into the 
 red eyes of Thomas Patullo. Patullo had pulled the 
 chairman's elbow, he was saying something in a 
 whisper, he was gesticulating, his look was of concern 
 and appeal : but at first Michael could realise only the 
 old man's ugliness. There was something shameful to 
 humanity in Patullo's face thus upturned in the gas- 
 light and seen in the frankness of an emotion. 
 
 Patullo said it all over again : the words came up 
 floated on an odour of whisky. Racie was leaning 
 over, whispering, frowning : his full face, with a line 
 between his brows and his eyes wide open, was, by 
 contrast to Patullo's, of so refreshing a beauty that 
 Michael felt grateful to his friend. Urged by signs 
 from Racie, Michael tried to get the gist of Patullo's 
 murmurings. 
 
 " Ladies and gentlemen," Michael said pleadingly, 
 " Mr. Patullo regrets he has left a portion of his manu- 
 script at home. Only some quotations from O'Reilly, 
 which Mr. Patullo tells me he meant to read at the end 
 of the paper. So Mr. Patullo will just go on with the 
 paper while I fetch the missing sheets. My motor is 
 just at hand and I shan't be absent more than twenty 
 minutes." 
 
 Old Patullo, after shaky searchings in his pockets, 
 gave Michael a latch-key and a page from a diary with
 
 36 THE ROSE-COLOURED ROOM 
 
 his address scribbled upon it. The people in the 
 benches exchanged glances as the young chairman 
 made his announcement and left the platform. " Did 
 you ever see anything as ill-managed as yon ? " whis- 
 pered the lean woman in the camphorated blacks. She 
 bridled, definitely hostile, at the mention of the motor. 
 Indeed there was a general feeling that this, like 
 Michael's evening dress, was a solecism, an evidence of 
 plutocratic pride. Even Cowie, recently so buoyant 
 and self -rejoicing, stiffened into hufnness as if a thistle 
 were sprouting inside him. There was giggling in the 
 benches : some one coughed with a hint of a jeer 
 as Michael vanished. 
 
 Michael went with a red face, trembling with shame 
 and the anger that was in his heart. His disgust made 
 it clear to him that these people were themselves ludi- 
 crous, that they were vulgar, pathetic in their preten- 
 sions ; that in individual cases they were ugly and en- 
 vious of his advantages. It was a well-known pheno- 
 menon of human nature that the vulgar, uneasy, tried 
 to hide their fear by a yelling mockery, foolish and 
 mirthless. . . . Michael did not succeed in consoling 
 himself with these thoughts as he scurried down to the 
 garage. Always there was the burning sense that he 
 was mocked. It seemed to him that these people had 
 wanted to be unkind. Why ? What harm had he 
 willed to them ? The coming of Alexander Cowie with 
 his blue suit and yellow boots and his self-delight 
 seemed to Michael to complete the destruction of his 
 hopes. The people's joy in Cowie was a deathly sign. 
 He had not got hold of the right people for the Eire 
 Club. Were there any right people to get ? Any- 
 where ? Michael's heart shrank from the dreary 
 dread ; from the cold mystery of these people's action
 
 THE COMING 37 
 
 in becoming members. He tried to think of the 
 simple, of the poor, and humble ; and there came a 
 vision of the rooms in the East-end and the South-side 
 of the city where he and his helpers assembled groups 
 of their countrymen and countrywomen ; fed the 
 people and read to them poetry and tales and taught 
 the children the Erse language and Irish songs and 
 dances. Michael visualised the rooms and the figures 
 and faces ; the stupid twinkle that came into the eyes, 
 the stupid smile on the mouths ; the ridicule which was 
 the stronghold of stodginess. , . . One of the places 
 was above a public-house, and the fruity odours, rising, 
 were a cynical reminder of how Michael Quentin had 
 got the money which he was using to remind the world 
 that there were gods behind the door which parted 
 earth from heaven and keys for the opening of the door. 
 . . . Michael had engaged, at a handsome salary, as 
 instructor in physical exercises, Miss Morland, recom- 
 mended by Thomas Patullo. Not by Patullo alone, 
 let it be understood ; for Miss Morland was teaching 
 in several schools and possessed diplomas. Besides, 
 Michael himself was not ignorant of these matters and 
 knew that Miss Morland, though an Englishwoman, 
 could dance a jig. . . . Racie came very faithfully to 
 these meetings. In all of Michael's mental pictures of 
 them Racie's figure seemed to preside ; still of profile 
 with just that quiet glance from the corner of his eye 
 when things were going too far ; profoundly cynical, 
 patient. It intensified Michael's bitterness against 
 these people that they had mocked him in Racie's 
 presence. 
 
 The relief of mere physical escape was.immense ; the 
 rush of the car, the darkness of the violet night, the 
 blurred golden lights. Michael's cheeks cooled ; even
 
 88 THE ROSE-COLOURED ROOM 
 
 his heart was a little less hot. He struggled with the 
 idea of staying away and letting the members of the 
 club go to their own peculiar lumpy devil. No : he 
 was going back, he was going to finish the evening with 
 conventional decency : he was going to show a quiet 
 indifference to Cowie. He was positive that Cowie 
 had not a drop of Irish blood in his body ! Michael 
 felt that he had been foolish in not safeguarding the 
 entrance to the club. Racie's fault with his wretched 
 pessimism ! . . . How was Cowie to be got rid of ? 
 Instinctively Michael recognised that Cowie repre- 
 sented the things most inimical to his ideal Eire Club ; 
 and the traitorous hearts of the people held something 
 that responded to Cowie, that delighted in Cowie 
 something, in fact, that was Cowie. Michael had had 
 at the first meeting of Cowie's eyes with his a sense of 
 closing struggle. 
 
 Tosh stopped the car. 
 
 " This is Twenty-three Lochaber Gardens, sir." 
 
 Michael got down. He was in a part of the city un- 
 known to him. Tenements loomed on either side, 
 softly massed in the mistiness of the night : Michael 
 noticed with a dreamy wonder that the fronts of these 
 buildings were of an almost unbroken darkness. The 
 golden reflections of the street-lamps seemed to dive 
 into the wet pavements. Between the blurred violet 
 above and the glimmering slough of the street, the 
 motor suggested some monster, in deep water, with 
 shining eyes shooting out glances for prey. 
 
 Michael entered the " close," dusty, gaily tiled ; 
 mounted the stairs, studying the brass-plates on the 
 doors. Strange little houses, secrets to a man who 
 lived among the well-to-do and studied the wretched ! 
 Michael had no notion of what sort of rooms there were
 
 THE COMING 39 
 
 behind those closed doors, nor of the kind of labour 
 that supported those hidden families in their occult 
 lives within. On each door there was a name-plate, 
 little or large : in each there was a letter-box for mes- 
 sages of life and death : before each lay a mat, coir or 
 coco-nut, with an anxious air of decency. The steps 
 had an odour of pipeclay and were still damp from the 
 washing of unseen hands. A gaslight burned half- 
 heartedly on each landing. Through the open window 
 on a landing came the voice of a cat guttural, furious, 
 exultant. Michael did not know in what sort of place 
 the animal was wandering : his thought was that the 
 cat had always remained a wild-hearted creature, a 
 child of the Night and the Earth ; and, at the poignant 
 cry, he had a vision of woods and waters, not at all of a 
 neat little back-court with red ash on the paths and 
 perhaps a fish-bone or two in the grass. 
 
 Reaching the topmost story, Michael found two 
 doors fronting each other, neither of them bearing a 
 name-plate. One of the doors was dusty and damaged 
 with no mat in front of it, with a rough-edged hole in 
 place of a letter-box, with iridescent hues on the un- 
 polished brass of the bell and handle. The other, with 
 its glittering brass and trim coir mat, had by contrast 
 a smiling air. 
 
 Michael considered the torn diary-sheet, marked 
 with the greasy imprint of the papillae of Patullo's 
 fingers, quaveringly scrawled with the number. 
 Twenty-three no doubt. One of these two flats must 
 be Patullo's ; and Michael concluded that an empty 
 house lay behind the neglected door. He thrust the 
 latch-key into the lock of the other. 
 
 The key went in briskly ; then stuck, and refused 
 to turn or emerge. As he shook it, Michael heard a
 
 40 THE ROSE-COLOURED ROOM 
 
 swift, soft sound as of unshod feet on the floor. A 
 match was scraped on emery sc'rrpitz ! 
 
 " Who's there ? " a voice said. 
 
 It might have been a child's voice, but Michael knew 
 that it was a young woman's. It was high-pitched, 
 gentle, rather frightened ; and it held a curious note 
 of intense expectancy. 
 
 " Does Mr. Patullo live here ? " Michael asked. 
 " Excuse me. He gave me the key. I've come for a 
 manuscript of his." 
 
 " Mr. Patullo is next door," the voice said. It had 
 descended now to the opening of the letter-box ; and 
 as Michael bent to reply, he was suddenly conscious of 
 the scent of a rose. It was as if a rose were unfolding 
 just inside the door, as if the little flat were planted 
 with brier-bushes for the bearing of a wonderful 
 blossom of colour and perfume. 
 
 " So sorry," Michael said. " I beg pardon. I 
 thought the other flat was empty, and as Mr. Patullo 
 certainly said twenty-three, and I'd looked at all the 
 other doors " 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 " So sorry if I've alarmed you. Thank you." 
 
 " Not at all." 
 
 For a few moments Michael remained, bending ; and 
 the breath of the rose still came to him. Then, sud- 
 denly, there was a soft scuffle of feet moving away. 
 Michael drew in his breath, inhaling the sweetness that 
 lingered ; stood up straight with a quickly beating 
 heart and shining staring eyes. 
 
 In Patullo's flat the flash of Michael's electric pocket 
 lamp showed him the door of the parlour. Patullo 
 had said that the manuscript sheets had been left on
 
 THE COMING 41 
 
 the table in that room. The ray from the lantern 
 falling on the painted boards in a corner showed rolls of 
 dust that danced to the swing of the door. The little 
 room had hotly red walls and was filled with pieces of 
 furniture too large for the spaces and turned at all 
 sorts of angles, suggesting to Michael's imagination a 
 mass of floating, jostling wreckage. Above the chim- 
 ney-piece was a cluster of little brown pictures 
 carbon-prints of the Pre-Raphaelites. Two rows of 
 shelves overflowed with books mostly bound in paper. 
 A red fire was dying in the grate : a brown earthen- 
 ware spittoon stood on the tiled hearth, a breakfast- 
 cup with dregs of tea beside it : the air was warm and 
 fetid with lurking odours. 
 
 Michael bent over the papers on the table. This 
 foul little house struck on his senses with the same 
 shameful feeling of exposure as he had felt on looking 
 into Patullo's face upturned in the gaslight. The 
 room, with its medley of old furniture and books, with 
 the exquisite handwriting of the manuscripts on the 
 table, with the soft little pictures, the gross cuspidor 
 and slovenly cup and saucer the room was an ex- 
 pression of Thomas Patullo's personality as Michael 
 saw it. It told of social descents, of miseries and hu- 
 miliations, of the survival of a certain sensitiveness. 
 . . . The old man had appeared out of his unknown 
 life in response to Michael's advertisement. Patullo, 
 at that first meeting, had talked a great deal about 
 himself, about the little things in literature that he 
 had done, about the people whom he knew, about the 
 newspapers on which he had friends. Michael had 
 paid little attention to these particulars at the time : 
 but now, languidly, the scene came back to him ; with 
 the awkward group of persons interested in Celtic
 
 42 THE ROSE-COLOURED ROOM 
 
 literature assembled in Mrs. Wylie's dining-room ; 
 with Patullo babbling, in the joy of having listeners ; 
 with Racie sitting silent with downcast lids, patient, 
 profoundly cynical. . . . Michael flushed as he bent 
 over the littered table, searching. What concern of 
 his was it if Patullo had descended through a succes- 
 sion of material and moral degradations, bringing with 
 him as salvage a refined accent, a sensuous love of 
 beauty, a knowledge of the classics ? A poor country- 
 man was not to be received with suspicious question- 
 ings, but to be welcomed, borne with, helped. . . . 
 
 Let him find the papers and get out of this un- 
 mannerly dreaming in another man's house, out of 
 this sickly physical atmosphere of tobacco and whisky, 
 of tea and dirty draperies ; out of this sickly mental 
 atmosphere of disgust ! It was a vile thing for a man 
 to feel loathing of his less fortunate fellow-creatures. 
 . . . Michael searched among the papers for those 
 that Patullo had described. Everywhere there was an 
 orderliness of detail in numbering and lettering ; and 
 everywhere the whole was confusion, with the punc- 
 tilious letters and numbers unaccountably appearing 
 or failing to appear. It was as if a brilliantly methodi- 
 cal mind had been shattered into sparkling fragments 
 which could not cohere. A list of Patullo's pupils, 
 with the sum due to him from each, lay over a beau- 
 tifully written fragment of Greek ; a set of test 
 questions and an inventory of shirts and towels were 
 pinned to a printed paragraph on herring fishing, 
 signed " T. P." 
 
 Suddenly, among the ruled papers, Michael turned 
 up a sheet of notepaper, written on in a big, distinct, 
 ungainly hand. The words on the sheet had jumped 
 to his brain before he realised what he held.
 
 THE COMING 48 
 
 Hurriedly, shamefacedly, he hid the sheet and con- 
 tinued to search. . . . 
 
 "... must know that there is no good in saying 
 things of that sort to me. All that I can ever feel for 
 a man or that any woman can feel for a man I felt 
 long ago for you, and to talk to me of a settling-down 
 with another man ..." 
 
 An old fellow like Patullo to be having an affair with 
 a woman ! that was all that Michael permitted 
 himself to think : he left the thought behind as he left 
 the nauseating atmosphere of Patullo's flat. What 
 had he to do with the meaning of either ? With the 
 manuscript in his hand Michael ran downstairs and 
 jumped into the motor. He wanted to get this busi- 
 ness over, to end up the weary evening at the club with 
 all that he could assume of cheer and composure ; 
 then to escape to be free to think. The sleeping 
 hours were coming, the hours of sweet follies, of 
 thoughts that fled from the daylight. Nobody sneered 
 at a dreamer lying dumb in the darkness : nobody 
 could be even silently cynical of the secret things that 
 one imagined, alone in the night things as sweetly 
 secret as the heart of a not yet unfolded rose. 
 
 When Michael came to town it was his habit to 
 lodge with a Mrs. Wylie, a woman who was accus- 
 tomed to him. Perhaps her way of regarding him was 
 as a lodger rather than as a citizen : for it is a fact 
 that she saw in Michael none of that eccentricity 
 which was remarked, with resentment or amusement, 
 by most of the people who were acquainted with him. 
 Michael's power of settling without a hesitation, with 
 out even a lifting of the brows, put him, in Mrs. Wylie's 
 esteem, into the class labelled " gentry." It had
 
 44 THE ROSE-COLOURED ROOM 
 
 never occurred to her that a gentleman could be ridi- 
 culous. Certain of his habits she noted and remem- 
 bered and made the subject of conversation ; but this 
 from a sense of duty, with respect, even admiringly. 
 Thus, she had told the neighbours, and the members 
 of her own family, of Michael's custom of taking a hot 
 bath every evening before dinner ; of the fact that he 
 changed, down to his very skin, every evening ; of 
 the fact that his under-things were all of silk. He 
 showed a quiet readiness in paying for all these luxu- 
 ries ; and this, quite simply, from Mrs. Wylie's point 
 of view, lifted them up out of the region of faddism, or 
 side, or self-pampering, into the atmosphere of self- 
 respect proper to one of the gentry. Considering 
 Michael, Mrs. Wylie had no detailed memory of the 
 public-houses at dusty corners, with their fruity odours 
 and their lettering of " Quentin." Her consciousness 
 was of the result of all these public-houses of one of 
 the results at least ; of Michael with his nice clothes 
 and toilet articles, his white hands and unoccupied 
 hours, his unsurpassed capacity for settling. The 
 singular books and magazines that she saw in Michael's 
 rooms and his various odd-looking callers members 
 of the societies which during the last two years he had 
 been sampling were accepted by Mrs. Wylie as evi- 
 dences that the young man was educated. The young 
 Wylies, cheerful oily engineers, who played banjos in 
 the kitchen, might have been rebuked by their mother 
 had they chosen their companions no better ; and they 
 might have been chaffed by her had they worn turn- 
 down collars like Michael's, or pitched their voices as 
 high as his, or shown as nervous a " want of manner." 
 But these things, derided by the independent members 
 of the Eire Club, were lost to Mrs. Wylie in the dazzle
 
 THE COMING 45 
 
 of her sense of Michael's perfect behaviour as a lodger 
 and his splendid solvency. 
 
 Into this atmosphere of deference Michael came 
 from the uneasy evening at the Eire Club, as he had 
 come from so many other defeated efforts with a 
 battered sense of failure, with a burning desire to hide 
 and forget. It was like stepping out of a crowded 
 railway carriage, full of hostile contacts, on to the 
 platform of a lonely country station. It brought, not 
 the warmth of comfort, but the quietude of relief. 
 Michael had told himself again and again, creeping 
 thus into Mrs. Wylie's, that he must learn to be con- 
 tent with the lot of an outcast : then when his bruises 
 healed he devised new plans for coming into close 
 contact with his fellows. To-night he had longed to 
 let this Eire Club, which was not his Eire Club, follow 
 to the limbo into which the rest of his failures had been 
 flung. . . . Patullo's paper, intolerably second-hand, 
 pedantic, and irrelevant, had brought two or three 
 members to their feet : they had spoken about 
 anything except Terence O'Reilly's poetry. 
 
 The vile stodginess that sought to patronise a singer 
 like O'Reilly ! The piteous cant about Irish super- 
 stition and Irish humour, the self-conscious smirking 
 comparisons between Celtic animation and Saxon 
 stolidity ! And always ignorance that Michael had 
 formed the Eire Club for any reason save anecdotes 
 and ghastly journalese ! There came the conviction 
 that Patullo had not been sober and that Racie had 
 known it ... that the lean woman in black had 
 known it too when she laughed. 
 
 Yet, since his return with Patullo's manuscript, 
 Michael's thought of escape was no longer a mere jib- 
 bing, wincing desire to get away from certain things,
 
 46 THE ROSE-COLOURED ROOM 
 
 but a longing to get to one thing. A thing awaited 
 him in the darkness, in the hours that are the dreamer's, 
 when the scoffer's voice is silent and his eyes cannot 
 behold. It was a thing elusive and mysterious and 
 sweet like the perfume and the heart of a rose. 
 
 The sense of rest in Mrs. Wylie's rooms must soon be 
 troubled by this eager desire. Michael ate because 
 Mrs. Wylie had taken pains to keep the food hot and 
 the wine cold. He even hesitated to go to bed be- 
 cause his nice landlady had obviously tried to make 
 the dining-room pleasant with flowers and newspapers. 
 But he went, leaving his letters unopened and one of 
 the papers unfolded at the variety column. 
 
 In his bedroom, in the cool darkness, with the violet 
 sky showing above the lowered window-sash, Michael 
 suddenly recalled that parlour of Thomas Patullo. 
 Michael had only a blind wonder about Patullo, a 
 sense of waiting till some one should explain to him 
 the incomprehensible creature. In flight from this 
 memory, an evil monster of the darkness, the young 
 man scraped a match-head on the emery of the box 
 sc'rrpitz ! And with the sound there came the sweet 
 frightened high-pitched voice with that touching note 
 of expectancy, and the shadowed room was filled with 
 the scent of a rose. 
 
 " Who's there ? " 
 
 There was really a rose on his dressing-table, as 
 Michael saw when he lighted the gas. He set the 
 flower-glass by his bedside so that the wind, blowing 
 in, might carry the perfume to him as he lay in the 
 darkness. With every waft he heard again the sweet 
 quivering voice : 
 
 " Who's there ? " 
 
 It might have been a child's voice, it was pitched so
 
 THE COMING 47 
 
 high and inflected so guilelessly, it was so full of that 
 eagerness of expectation. But Michael knew that it 
 was a woman's. What was the meaning of that note 
 in her voice ? For what was her heart waiting ? 
 Michael had read a confusion of fairy-tales and legends, 
 and now he had a vision of a Maeterlinck princess, 
 captive and mournful-eyed, behind a tall thorny hedge 
 of roses ; calling across a dimming sunset-lit country 
 calling, calling, till another voice should answer . . . 
 calling in a maiden's utmost need till a man should 
 hear. . . . 
 
 People passed in the street under Michael's window. 
 Footsteps going eastwards suddenly stopped, with a 
 scurr on the asphalt, arresting feet that were passing 
 westwards. A woman's voice exclaimed softly, in 
 question : a man's replied ; and Michael heard the 
 footsteps again, falling side by side, passing away into 
 the night. 
 
 He lay shuddering. The horror of the city, its 
 awful matter-of-factness, seemed to be stretching ugly 
 hands after him into that dim sunlit land of dreams. 
 A woman's voice calling in her utmost need and a 
 man's answer ! . . . Michael's heart struggled to 
 escape, to recover the rapture of his dream. The 
 horrible suggestive footsteps and voices were gone : 
 the wind, blowing in gently from the violet darkness, 
 again brought to him nothing but the scent of the 
 half-unfolded red rose. Michael tried to keep awake 
 so that that sweet thought might companion him : 
 but, before his fancy could paint in the grey tower, 
 the thorny barrier, and the blue hills from which the 
 rescuer came riding, he fell asleep. 
 
 He awoke very early, as was natural in a man who 
 had become accustomed to living in the country and
 
 48 THE ROSE-COLOURED ROOM 
 
 sensitive to the first quiver of dawn and the tunings 
 of the birds. Michael came back to a consciousness 
 that something pleasant had happened to him. Then 
 he remembered what it was and groped among his 
 dreams for some confirming memory of a meeting with 
 the Maeterlinck princess of mournful eyes and tender 
 expectant voice. Finding none, he went to the win- 
 dow and drew up the holland blind which was glowing 
 faintly, artificially sunshiny in the first influx of light. 
 There was a wood-yard opposite this bedroom window 
 and beyond the brown and blond stacks and heaps, 
 low and broken lines of buildings, so that Michael 
 could see a stretch of sky. At first it was of a pearl- 
 grey, then radiantly primrose-coloured : then the pink 
 began to flow into it, with cloudings of crimson, with 
 shinings of rose that was almost white. Michael 
 imagined the great circle of which this was a segment, 
 cut off clearly by the dark violet buildings. The circle 
 was like a rose with rank on rank of petals, the colour 
 mounting from the purple of the outermost, through 
 notes of brighter and brighter pink, till it reached the 
 gold-white dazzle of the heart. And in this intolerable 
 splendour God was hidden : all the petals were, as 
 Dante had dreamed and Dore" drawn, composed of a 
 great crowd of winged creatures whose happy faces, 
 unwaveringly expectant, were bent towards the 
 central mystery, the heart of the rose. . . . 
 
 When Michael began to feel cold he got back into 
 bed. For a long time he sat with his hands clasped 
 round his knees. His tints were all very pure, and 
 the light, falling full on him, was repelled by no dead 
 surfaces : nor must it crawl in any of those furrows 
 which are the gutters of cares and vices. Yet there 
 was a suggestion of pathos in Michael's appearance ;
 
 THE COMING 49 
 
 something that strong people found attractive and the 
 weak majority found absurd or even repellent. Poised 
 on his long white neck his face seemed a rather narrow 
 oval. The eyes, of a golden-brown colour, were promi- 
 nent, vivid, with a hint of bluish fullness beneath 
 them. The nose was short and straight, the mouth, 
 large-lipped, was scarcely closed. The chin was 
 rounded and cleft, the forehead of an admirable 
 breadth, height, and placidity. Michael's hands and 
 figure were those of a delicately nurtured young man 
 who had never done any hard work nor gone in for 
 outdoor games. 
 
 Presently he turned to the table by the bedside. 
 The half-unfolded rose had loosened from its calyx 
 and dropped : it lay, still in one crimson cone, on the 
 dark wood and its reflection glowed up at it. Michael 
 lifted the green stem, stared for a moment at the heart 
 of the ruined rose. The little heart, hidden till the 
 time of unfolding or the ravaging of ruin, was gold 
 and white : it seemed to radiate light : it, too, was a 
 mystery ; in it, too, God was hiding.
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 THE IMPRISONED PRINCESS 
 
 THERE was no butter in the house. 
 
 Mrs. Trathbye had known this since breakfast time : 
 she had made up her mind then that they would just 
 have to do without any : for she had resolved that she 
 would never again buy the weekly two pounds of 
 butter a day before the proper time. The proper time 
 was Saturday, and to-day was only Friday. Very 
 well. Let them suffer for having used too much 
 butter : let them learn that they must draw in their 
 horns ; that Mrs. Trathbye was not made of butter. 
 
 At breakfast and during the active morning hours 
 Mrs. Trathbye was able to treat the matter with a 
 certain lightness. She even made a joke to Aunt 
 Caroline while she was scalding the empty butter- 
 dish. But in the afternoon when Drusilla returned 
 from the swimming-baths she despondently noted in 
 her mother signs of ill-temper. Mrs. Trathbye became 
 jarringly talkative on what was at best an exhausted 
 subject. 
 
 No butter in the house ! Not even a morsel of jam, 
 nor a bit of cheese, nor an egg. Mrs. Trathbye had 
 given the last egg to Kathleen, poor child, at break- 
 fast : she was doing her best but she could not make 
 the eggs last the week. ... It would not have been 
 so bad if the bread had not been so stale. The poor 
 girls would soon be coming in, tired and hungry. . . . 
 
 " It's no worse for them than for ... you and 
 
 50
 
 THE IMPRISONED PRINCESS 51 
 
 Aunt Carlie," Drusilla said, faltering on an inarticulate 
 " me." 
 
 " I always think it's harder on a person that's been 
 out working," Mrs. Trathbye said. There was a 
 weight of meaning in her words, and Drusilla turned 
 away, flushing. 
 
 " Ah then, I'm not saying it isn't hard enough for us 
 all, child," Mrs. Trathbye said with a touch of con- 
 trition. 
 
 Drusilla eagerly hailed it. 
 
 " Mother," she said, " I may as well go and get the 
 butter at Ackroyd's. Let me ? I'll go before I take 
 my things off." 
 
 Mrs. Trathbye hesitated. 
 
 " What difference does a day make ? " Drusilla said, 
 too urgent. Mrs. Trathbye became defensive, sus- 
 picious that her housekeeping was being treated as an 
 easy thing about which she made an exaggerating fuss. 
 She stuck to her resolution ; and the effort absorbing 
 all her moral force, she again became irresponsibly 
 spiteful. Drusilla escaped. 
 
 In the bedroom the girl put on a dressing-gown, a 
 faded thing but of a beautiful purplish-pink colour : 
 she let down her hair, damp from the swimming-baths. 
 Then she heard her sisters, Essie and Kathleen, come 
 in, and again she rose to escape. There were only 
 two bedrooms in the Trathbyes' flat and they were 
 little narrow places. Drusilla and Essie slept in this 
 one, Mrs. Trathbye and Kathleen in the other ; while 
 Aunt Caroline, who liked to be in an acknowledged 
 discomfort, had a folding-bed in the parlour. Drusilla 
 knew that both of the girls would come in here to take 
 off their things and lay them on chairs or on the bed : 
 she knew just how they would look in the glass, how
 
 52 THE ROSE-COLOURED ROOM 
 
 they would glance at her, how they would pass and re- 
 pass her, jostling her with ostentatious " Excuse me's " 
 with a wronged air of having been out earning money 
 and of finding the house overcrowded when they came 
 home. She knew that they would look shabby and 
 clumsy in their cheap boots and ready-made costumes, 
 and that Essie's face would be hot and shiny and 
 gritty. If she spoke, smiling, they would not try to 
 smile : they might not answer or they might contra- 
 dict. . . . She knew, too, that there was a conscious- 
 ness that would flash through them when they looked 
 at their reflections in the glass, then at her sitting 
 there. It was to escape from the presence of this 
 thought that she fled. 
 
 She went into the kitchen and began to toast slices 
 of the elderly white bread. Because of the heat Mrs. 
 Trathbye was carrying the tea-things into the parlour. 
 The open doors showed the faded green walls and the 
 green linoleum on the floor, the half-soiled cloth on the 
 table, the mustard-and-cress sponges hanging in the 
 oriel window, spots of vivid translucent green. 
 
 Aunt Caroline was at the kitchen fireside, seated in 
 an old rocking-chair, writing with her fountain-pen on 
 some pages torn from an account book. She earned 
 a little money by doing a woman's column for a 
 Wicklow paper. 
 
 " Am I in your way ? " Drusilla asked with a 
 longing for humane speech. 
 
 Aunt Caroline did not reply. 
 
 " Am I in your way, Aunt Carlie ? " Drusilla asked 
 more crisply. 
 
 " I don't suppose you care whether you are or not," 
 Aunt Carlie said morosely. She copied a statement 
 about skirts from a London paper three months old,
 
 THE IMPRISONED PRINCESS 53 
 
 then began to recall a recipe. " Is there a circumflex 
 accent on ' cream ' in French ? " she asked with a 
 sheepish reluctance. 
 
 " A grave accent, I think," Drusilla said. 
 
 " Oh, indeed ! " Aunt Caroline said with a resentful 
 slant of her head. She affected to meditate, then 
 said : " I think I shall put a circumflex. . . . Why are 
 you going about such a sight with your hair hanging 
 down ? " 
 
 Drusilla heard the question every swimming-day. 
 
 " It's damp," she said. " I was at the baths with 
 Miss Morland." 
 
 " H'm," Aunt Caroline uttered : she made a ridi- 
 culous little motion of her shoulders, intended for a 
 shrug, implying doubts of Miss Morland. 
 
 Mrs. Trathbye came into the kitchen : she looked 
 at the fire-lit hah* and said with a mingling of rebuke 
 and derision : 
 
 " Take care you don't put any hairs in among the 
 toast. It would be an improvement if you fastened 
 up your hair when you're going where there's food." 
 
 " It's tied with a ribbon," Drusilla said coldly. 
 
 Then Essie came in. 
 
 " Have you been washing your hair ? " she asked 
 with an obvious assumption of surprise. 
 
 Drusilla stood up, the plate of toast in her hand. 
 
 " Now ! " she said, with a defiant cheerfulness. She 
 drew in a deep breath of air, expelled it, throwing back 
 her head with a laughing mockery. She flung her 
 beauty in the faces of these three hostile women. She 
 pulled off the ribbon and her hair streamed, fire- 
 illumined, red-brown and golden, curling, over her 
 broad shoulders : she put one hand behind her to 
 catch the ends of the tresses and show that they fell
 
 54 THE ROSE-COLOURED ROOM 
 
 far below the girdle of the old gown. Drusilla's cheeks 
 were petal-like in their bright pinkness flowing into 
 whiteness. 
 
 For a moment the three women looked at her ; 
 Aunt Caroline stupidly malign, Essie angry ; Mrs. 
 Trathbye with a bright startled look of sympathy. 
 Then the mother said : 
 
 " Come in to tea, children, such as it is. Essie, 
 don't be wearing that dreadful ' No butter ' face." 
 
 Mrs. Trathbye began to laugh ; and, laughing, she 
 was a charming woman, sweet, witty, and handsome. 
 
 It was just that lovable laugh of her mother's that 
 made Drusilla feel guilty because she had arranged to 
 go secretly that evening to Miss Morland's gymnastic 
 class. If her mother had continued to be unpleasant 
 Drusilla would have had the indemnifying sense of 
 being driven into silence. But Mrs. Trathbye's gaiety 
 lasted during the meal of tea and dry toast : she 
 mocked the despondent Essie and Kathleen and made 
 jokes about Aunt Caroline's long lean neck rising 
 from a collarless red blouse. 
 
 " You're just like a hen at the poulterer's, Carlie," 
 Mrs. Trathbye said. " Look at my beautiful neck." 
 She put a hand on either side of her neck, turning her 
 head quaintly. " Not one of you girls has a neck like 
 mine," she said, her eyes passing Kathleen and Essie, 
 glancing to Drusilla " Nor a figure like mine." She 
 drew down her hands, over the baggy black silk blouse 
 that she wore, defining her wasted shape. 
 
 " No," Drusilla said with a gentleness of pity. It 
 was as if the young woman that Mrs. Trathbye had 
 been looked suddenly out of the past, pleading to be 
 remembered, pleading her right to a place by Drusilla's
 
 THE IMPRISONED PRINCESS 55 
 
 side and a heart beating in unison with hers, pleading 
 forgetfulness of the long, careworn years each like a 
 layer of earth on the grave of her beauty. . . . 
 
 After tea Essie pulled out the sewing-machine and 
 began to work it. Aunt Caroline, with her passion for 
 martyrdom, sat in the darkest corner of the draughty 
 side of the room, writing her woman's column, holding 
 the ragged account-book page on the cover of a book. 
 Kathleen, who still wore her hair in a looped-up plait 
 set with a big bow, was going about the room, search- 
 ing in corners and opening and shutting the bookcase 
 and cupboards. 
 
 " Dillie, where on earth did you put that library 
 book ? " 
 
 " Nowhere. I never saw it," Drusilla said, quickly 
 on the defensive. 
 
 " Rubbish. . . . You must have put it somewhere. 
 It would be more good-natured of you to say instead 
 of keeping me poking about looking for it. I can't 
 have all day to read the way you have. . . ." 
 
 " Ah, can't you tell her where you've put the book ? " 
 Aunt Caroline said, raising her head. " It isn't very 
 easy for a person to write and she going on like that." 
 
 " As if I'd hidden the book ! " Drusilla said, tears 
 leaping to her eyes. " I believe you took it out with 
 you and left it at the office." 
 
 " I didn't," Kathleen said. " I'm sure I didn't," 
 she repeated with a quiver of doubt. Her office was 
 a very quiet one ; she spent hours daily sewing or 
 reading, and was constantly carrying magazines and 
 books to and fro. " I don't get so much time for 
 reading, I'm sure," she muttered to cover her retreat, 
 as she resigned herself to sitting down with an old 
 number of The Lady's Circle.
 
 56 THE ROSE-COLOURED ROOM 
 
 Drusilla went into the kitchen, where Mrs. Trathbye 
 was hauling up a squealing pulley from which dangled 
 a row of stockings. 
 
 " Mother, let me do the tea-things," Drusilla said ; 
 and the expected reply came : 
 
 " Ah, I'll do them in half the time myself." 
 
 Drusilla went into the bedroom to put on her coat 
 and hat. Her gymnastic costume, acquired by many 
 economies and deceptions, lay concealed at Miss Mor- 
 land's house, whither she was going under pretext of 
 a mere social evening. . . . Well, supposing she were 
 acting falsely ! She said it to herself in a passion of 
 desolate disgust. A lie was less demoralising than a 
 train of little fizzlings, naggings, jeerings, offences. 
 As she closed the door of the little flat, she said to 
 herself, with a sense of wasted brilliance, that her 
 home, full of competing women, was like a harem 
 without its material luxury. 
 
 II 
 
 Grace Morland was lodged in two big rooms in a 
 big, dark-grey, decadent house, one of a terrace in the 
 west of Glasgow. The trees in front of it, dusty and 
 already black-green, moved slowly in the rising wind. 
 There was a sunken carriage-step before each door and 
 the exuberantly designed iron railings, protecting a 
 few feet of paved area, were broken into an outline 
 almost like one of Nature's. A little surprised-looking 
 maid guided Drusilla to Miss Morland' s room. 
 
 " Oh, it's you you're looking first-rate too," Grace 
 said. " Find a chair take the basket one, do ! 
 Take off your things. We've time to have a cig. and
 
 THE IMPRISONED PRINCESS 57 
 
 a comfy chat before we start. That's to say I suppose 
 I'll have the cig. and we'll both have the chat." 
 
 Miss Morland spoke very loudly. Clad in her gym- 
 nastic costume she lay down in her deck-chair while 
 Drusilla sat on a little stool opposite to her. The big 
 room was tireless and growing dark, so that the little 
 red pulse of Miss Morland's cigarette seemed a thing 
 very vital. The wind mourned in the chimney : the 
 room was heavily furnished and the old-fashioned 
 mirror above the chimney-piece reflected the dull 
 silvers and black-greys of the storm-boding sky. But 
 Drusilla had a happy sense of adventure. 
 
 Miss Morland looked at her ; and, with a subtle 
 suggestion of defiance in her voice, asked : 
 
 " I say, how do you like me in this costume ? " 
 She stretched out her limbs, which were long and 
 shapely. 
 
 " I've seen it before," Drusilla said, surprised. " It 
 suits you very well," she added deferentially. 
 
 " Doesn't it ? " Miss Morland said. " Isn't it a pity 
 women can't always go about like this ? Think how 
 free we'd be ! ... It's coming, of course." 
 
 " I like skirts," Drusilla ventured, looking at her 
 doubtfully. 
 
 " Oh, well, for indoors. Men like them I 
 
 never saw such a feminine person as you," Miss Mor- 
 land said, suddenly indignant. 
 
 It occurred to Drusilla that she herself had said 
 nothing about men ; that she had not thought of 
 
 men Another thing that struck her was Grace 
 
 Morland's habit of deliberately substituting the word 
 " person " for " girl " when she referred to any woman 
 who was young. The fact that Miss Morland obviously 
 said " girl " naturally, and " person " with intention,
 
 58 THE ROSE-COLOURED ROOM 
 
 proved that she must think of Drusilla as a girl. It 
 would have dismayed Drusilla to believe that she 
 could really appear as a person to any one. Yet why 
 should Miss Morland show this grudgingness in the 
 use of the word " girl " in Drusilla's case, especially 
 as she applied it freely to women who were her own 
 contemporaries and plainly Drusilla's seniors . . . ? 
 Drusilla mused, feeling worried. 
 
 " My dear, I was amused about your costume," 
 Miss Morland said. " When you sent me that p.c. 
 asking me to receive it here I thought I'd have a fit ! " 
 
 " The truth is, Mother doesn't know I've joined your 
 class," Drusilla said, vividly blushing and trying to 
 laugh. 
 
 " My dear, of course I guessed that," Miss Morland 
 chuckled. " The old lady would be shocked ? " 
 
 " And Aunt Carlie and the girls would make a fuss," 
 Drusilla said. ..." Mother isn't old : she's very 
 good-looking. . . . It's not exactly that they'd be 
 shocked : but they you'd need to live in our house 
 to know how they oppose things without any reason, 
 just because I suggest them. ... I think it's just a 
 kind of habit from always having been kept living so 
 close together. I don't believe Aunt Carlie, especially, 
 knows when she's contradicting. And mother thinks 
 you don't need anything never to do anything or go 
 anywhere. ... I suppose I'm a coward, but what's 
 the use of always having horrible little fusses ? " 
 Dejection had fallen upon her : her bright sense of 
 adventure was quenched in shame. Seated on the 
 little stool, she seemed like a child who gets hurt at 
 the beginning of a day's pleasuring. 
 
 " Never mind, kiddie," Miss Morland said kindly. 
 The words were out before she realised their motherly
 
 THE IMPRISONED PRINCESS 59 
 
 tone, and she made as it were a clutch at their escaping 
 forms. " A person has surely a right to take her 
 pleasures as she chooses," she said. " A grown-up 
 man wouldn't dream of being in subjection in these 
 matters. Why should a woman ? " 
 
 Drusilla was on the point of saying something about 
 the expense : she stopped, again blushing, remember- 
 ing how indelicate this would be to Miss Morland, 
 who received the fees. 
 
 " Do you think it's wrong to do it in secret ? " she 
 asked. 
 
 Miss Morland was again surprised into looking 
 touched, but recollected her policy towards Drusilla. 
 
 " How do I know any better than yourself ? " 
 
 " Well, of course, you know more. . . ." Drusilla 
 looked downcast. Miss Morland was not turning out 
 as she had hoped. For years Drusilla had been hoping 
 always with a tinge of doubt for the coming of the 
 Woman Friend of whom one read in books. She was 
 at once the background and the support of the 
 Beautiful Girl, this Woman Friend ; a creature not 
 of necessity physically fan*, but gracious, cultured, 
 sincere. She was a certain number of years say, 
 eight to sixteen years older than the Beautiful Girl, 
 so that no sense of rivalry should defile the girl's 
 worship of her social calm, the girl's acceptance of her 
 moral and aesthetic dogmas. The Woman Friend had 
 an exquisite selflessness an opening of all her heart 
 for the inpouring of one's sorrows : she had no per- 
 sonal moods. The illusion that she was playing the 
 principal part was not hers : she stood with her gaze 
 on the young friend in the fullness of the light. She 
 had humour and taught one how to smile at bitter 
 things. And her sweet wisdom, the quietening of her
 
 60 THE ROSE-COLOURED ROOM 
 
 pulses, were the results of something that had hap- 
 pened to her in the past something that one surmised 
 now and then when her sympathy grew so tender 
 that it was almost sad. . . . 
 
 Something with a man in it. His voice broke 
 bidding her farewell, his eyes overflowed, his hand 
 shook. . . . 
 
 Drusilla had gone dreaming of this self-possessed, 
 self-oblivious Woman Friend, experienced yet un- 
 contaminated, enthusiastic without egotism ; and, 
 twice, had thought that she had found her. Now she 
 feared that Miss Morland was going to be another 
 disappointment. Grace had interested her at their 
 first meeting at the baths a year ago : they had had 
 many long talks in the cooling-room, lying on the red- 
 and-white-striped couches in a laziness that felt itself 
 pleasantly justified. True, Drusilla had noticed, 
 almost at the beginning, that Miss Morland had some 
 personal vanities and insincerities not to be found in 
 the ideal Woman Friend of the mild novel. For 
 example, Miss Morland's suggestion of her skill in 
 swimming, given while she was lying on the couch, 
 was not carried out by her actual performance in the 
 pond ; and Drusilla's knowledge of this wakened a 
 kind of uneasiness as she listened to Miss Morland 
 talking about her tennis, her hill-climbing, the poems 
 she had made, and the tributes of various responsible 
 persons to her elocutionary powers. Of her Swedish 
 gymnastics and dancing Drusilla had as yet no doubt : 
 for she knew that Miss Morland had given up teaching 
 languages to go in for gymnastics as a profession ; and 
 Drusilla had an ignorant, awed respect for things done 
 professionally, and particularly for the earning of 
 money.
 
 THE IMPRISONED PRINCESS 61 
 
 Miss Morland had encouraged her to read ; declaring 
 herself amused that a person should have read so little 
 and should avoid books that her mother found im- 
 proper. If a person couldn't decide for herself ! 
 
 Miss Morland lent books iconoclastic little paper 
 pamphlets which said that there should be no Church, 
 and that kings, from the beginning of history, had 
 been rascals ; problem novels ; Woman Suffrage and 
 Food Reform magazines ; books on mental thera- 
 peutics and spiritualism. All these Drusilla read in 
 secret with a leaping heart, with an exquisite sense of 
 law-breaking. It needed only a little reading to show 
 her that Miss Morland had merely rushed past all these 
 subjects of which she only half consciously feigned a 
 knowledge ; but because Drusilla was timid and 
 humble, with an aching sense of her own ignorance, 
 she remained in the position of a disciple and was 
 actually learning something from Miss Morland. 
 There was much to love in the woman ; especially a 
 brusque protectiveness which was her natural attitude 
 towards Drusilla. If she had let it have its way who 
 knows how near their relationship might have come 
 to an ideal friendship between a younger woman 
 and an elder ? But sex rivalry came to vitiate it : 
 Miss Morland struggled against the motherliness 
 which would have cherished Drusilla, beautiful 
 and softly helpless : Grace persisted in the assump- 
 tion that they stood at the same stage of develop- 
 ment. She did not pretend that she was as young 
 as Drusilla, but feigned to feel that Drusilla was as 
 old as she. 
 
 " I'll go now and put on my gymnastic costume," 
 Drusilla said. 
 
 " Yes, do. ... What a prim way you have of
 
 62 THE ROSE-COLOURED ROOM 
 
 speaking ! " Miss Morland said with her amused air. 
 " Why don't you say ' gym.' ? " 
 
 Brasilia coloured, a little resentful, and went in 
 silence. Grace began to do a stooping exercise with 
 a waste-paper basket loaded with books ; inhaling as 
 she raised the basket above her head, exhaling as she 
 lowered it. ... Drusilla danced in blushing and 
 laughing, in her blue tunic and long stockings. She 
 stood in front of Grace, fidgeting with a sparkling 
 gaucherie altogether charming, bowed, and spread 
 out the scant skirts of her tunic. 
 
 " Don't I look lovely ? " she asked. 
 
 " . . . It shortens you very much," Miss Morland 
 said, with the startled sense, which came to many 
 people sooner or later, of how lovely Drusilla looked. 
 "... But it's very becoming," she added, in 
 an emollient tone. " Get on your coat and we'll 
 
 go." 
 
 At the gymnastic class Drusilla was radiantly in 
 earnest ; wondering at the things that Miss Morland 
 and the other girls could do, trying, with crimsoning 
 cheeks, to leap and swing as they did ; playing 
 hopping and ball-throwing games with a child's 
 seriousness. 
 
 " I didn't get enough of fun when I was a little 
 girl," Drusilla said, after the last exercises, looking 
 into Miss Morland's eyes, which, at the sight of her 
 awkwardness, had become wholly friendly. 
 
 " Didn't you ? " Miss Morland said. " I had a very 
 
 happy childhood I was always a dreadful pickle " 
 
 She broke off and, loudly clapping her hands, called 
 to the girls to wind up with a dance. But Drusilla 
 already knew the stories of Miss Morland's childhood 
 in her father's big country house in Lancashire the
 
 THE IMPRISONED PRINCESS 68 
 
 sort of childhood, Drusilla had often thought, that 
 one read about in books. 
 
 Miss Morland played noisily and haltingly, breaking 
 down every now and then. The girls, in their blue 
 and white, hopped and slid irregularly about the long 
 bare room, airy and pallidly tinted. Then they all 
 crowded into the cloak-room, where there was a 
 plunging into skirts, a changing of shoes, a riot of 
 laughter and talk. Drusilla listened, in a wistful 
 interest, for a time : then she managed to get into 
 conversation with two girls. . . . 
 
 One of them was already looking at her in that way. 
 The look fell blightingly on the bloom of her happiness. 
 . . . She tried to get to the glass and peeped over 
 heads and shoulders at her reflection, rose-cheeked 
 and red-haired. 
 
 " I say ! " Miss Morland said. (Almost everything 
 that Miss Morland said was prefaced by that 
 unnecessary statement : "I say ! ") " Are you 
 ready ? " 
 
 They went out, scurrying across the asphalt play- 
 ground. The school in which Miss Morland held her 
 evening classes was in a poor semi-respectable part of 
 the east of the city a place of remnant-shops and 
 pawnbrokers, of fried-fish shops, of littered closes and 
 streets, of a surplus of little children with dirty faces, 
 foul mouths, and innocent eyes. A large percentage 
 of the population was Irish, and their names of Quinn, 
 MacNulty, O'Brien, and the rest shone over their 
 shops and public-houses while their children on the 
 pavements spoke a mongrel language. 
 
 As the two girls went by, the young men, grouped 
 at the corners, uttered chaff : their eyes passed Grace 
 to dwell on Drusilla' s rosiness ; and the more gifted
 
 64 THE ROSE-COLOURED ROOM 
 
 of them saluted her with such phrases as : " Hullo, 
 wee Jeanie ! " or " Cherry Ripe ! " 
 
 " I say ! " Miss Morland said, suddenly stopping in 
 her long-stepped, stooping walk. " I say I wonder 
 would you mind ? I want to go up to Michael Quen- 
 tin's club-rooms in Groome Street with a message. 
 I say, I wonder would you mind ? I'd thought of 
 going up to-morrow, but to-night we're so close to the 
 place. . . . Perhaps we'd better just take that car ? " 
 Miss Morland began to run towards the car station, 
 stopped, looked questioningly at Drusilla ; began to 
 run again and replied to a gesture of the guard's ; 
 then stopped. 
 
 " It's a pity not just to go up when we're so near." 
 
 The guard made a motion of inquiry : then all the 
 lines of his face and figure seemed to drop downwards 
 in disgust and he violently rang his bell. The car 
 moved on and Miss Morland, after a vague little run 
 in its wake, turned and strode up a side street. 
 
 " We'll just go better just to go and get it over," 
 she said to Drusilla, scurrying along beside her. " I 
 always believe in knowing what you want to do and 
 doing a thing right away." 
 
 Groome Street, narrow, with yellow flares of light 
 and black shadows, full of people, of fruit-barrows and 
 hot potato machines, gave an impression of brawling 
 life. Men and boys wearing green tweed caps and 
 women in tartan or fawn-coloured shawls debouched 
 from the public-houses ; for it was almost closing time. 
 
 " I say, you don't mind running a little, do you ? " 
 Miss Morland panted. " They usually go on till quite 
 ten, but Michael Quentin may be gone." . . . Miss 
 Morland was in a breathless state and could not keep 
 up with Drusilla.
 
 THE IMPRISONED PRINCESS 65 
 
 " That's a thing I'm not good at. I don't know how 
 it is. Anything else in the athletic line. . . ." 
 
 They entered a close and mounted hollow-stepped 
 stairs. People coming down passed them. On the 
 first landing an open doorway flooded out light and 
 odours of lemonade and bananas : within there was a 
 jabber of voices, the sound of a banjo hopping along 
 to an ambling pianoforte accompaniment. A man 
 began to sing : 
 
 " What is it sets you a-dreaming, a-dreaming, 
 Under the moon under the moon 
 When the yellow gals on the floor of the barn 
 Are dancing in tune, dancing in tune 
 And each of them dear little yellow gals 
 In the arms of a coon ! " 
 
 A number of voices repeated appreciatively : "A 
 coon ! " and there was an outbreak of laughter and 
 applause. Drusilla held Grace's arm to stay her, and 
 they stood and listened. 
 
 To Drusilla the whole incident was an exquisite 
 adventure. She felt admiration for Miss Morland, 
 who carelessly went here and there in the city even 
 at ten o'clock ! calling on men, not even in houses, 
 but in strange places such as offices, studios, and club- 
 rooms. The nearness of a crowd always excited 
 Drusilla ; especially when the crowd was made up of 
 people whose lives were strange to her ; and as the 
 great mass of the city lay unknown around her, 
 romance pulsed for her in the blocks of buildings and 
 the silent comings and goings of the streets. Now she 
 was wrought upon by the male voice singing alone, 
 by the volume of sound when the audience all shouted 
 
 E
 
 66 THE ROSE-COLOURED ROOM 
 
 together. When the song was ended and Grace led 
 her into the room, Drusilla's face was alight with these 
 emotions ; and it kept the heightened hues of the 
 gymnastics and the rush through the damp windy 
 night. 
 
 Thus she came before Michael's eyes. He himself 
 never doubted that it was the will of God. Nothing 
 was more apparent to him than that she was the work 
 of God ; that God had fashioned her with the same 
 love as he used in the making of a flower. As she 
 stood by Grace who was talking to Racie Moore it 
 seemed to Michael that the faces and forms about 
 her were blurred into a mass, so that she shone out 
 like a single rose blooming in a desolated garden. . . . 
 Michael, staring, came slowly down the room ; almost 
 in fear that the nearer he came the more would she 
 fade from the bright fulfilment of his ideal. 
 
 But the nearer he came the more beautiful he saw 
 her. Miss Morland introduced him and he stood silent 
 while Racie spoke a little. No use in Racie glancing 
 at him with that eye-corner look of his which hinted : 
 " Better say something. Better not stare at the girl." 
 Michael knew that he had a right to look and that 
 speech was unnecessary. . . . Her cheeks were like 
 the petals of a wild rose, the clear vivid pink washing 
 into a white as clear. Her mouth oh, the simile had 
 been done to death, but to what but a cherry could you 
 liken a mouth lipped so fully and silkenly, so redly 
 coloured, so soft and small ? Her eyes had the red- 
 brown tints of rose-tree twigs and thorns. Her red 
 hair was a wonderful criss-cross of brights and darks 
 under her wide- brimmed hat ; hair so beautifully 
 negligent in its puffing and piling that in an instant 
 Michael knew just how, loosened, it would stream and
 
 THE IMPRISONED PRINCESS 67 
 
 fall. He knew, too, that it was chiefly from it that 
 there came a sweetness that was like the breath of a 
 rose. 
 
 Miss Morland, in a slow kind of shout, opened her 
 business with Michael ; and while she was talking to 
 him, Racie answered Drusilla's shy questions about 
 the Eire Club. It was interesting to see the actual 
 bare-floored room where Michael Quentin was trying 
 to get into touch with his poor country-people ; and 
 to see the poor country-people larking about among 
 the bare benches, eating stray bananas and oranges, 
 drinking lemonade, lighting pipes and cigarettes, 
 winding mufflers and shawls about themselves and 
 their children, trudging to the door with : " Good 
 night, then, Mr. Quentin. Good night, Mr. Moore." 
 
 Drusilla was not intimate with any young man : 
 she had a brother and several cousins in Ireland ; and, 
 at the dancing-class which she had attended some years 
 earlier with Essie and Kathleen, she had become 
 fleetingly familiar with two or three boys of her own 
 age. But the Trathbyes' house was pre-eminently a 
 feminine household, and any relationship with men 
 did not go past shy gratified beginnings. Drusilla 
 was vivified by the thought that Michael and Racie 
 were both young well-dressed nice men. Their 
 quietude was emphasised by the roughness of the poor 
 fellow-countrymen and by Miss Morland's bawling 
 speech, the jolting, jerking vivacity which she prac- 
 tised to Why did Grace practise a jolting, 
 
 jerking vivacity ? Drusilla put the question aside for 
 later asking. 
 
 " Then you are interested in Celtic literature, 
 Miss Trathbye ? " Racie was asking with his faint 
 smile.
 
 68 THE ROSE-COLOURED ROOM 
 
 Drusilla told him of some of the things that she had 
 read, and that she was Irish too. 
 
 " So I was afraid," Racie said. " Afraid for your 
 own sake, I mean. It's a frightful misfortune. Mr. 
 Quentin enjoys it because he's only half Irish : he has 
 an absurd notion of Ireland that he got in his child- 
 hood from affected Celtic dramas and tales. He's 
 been to Ireland, of course ; but landing at Belfast in 
 a drizzle and being cheated at dirty Western inns 
 makes no difference to a man who's an illusionist : he 
 keeps the dream and defies the reality. . . . Not that 
 it matters much. Anything does as an outlet for 
 romance and it's romance that's the essential part of 
 him, not Irishism or is it Irishness or Ire ? ... If it 
 hadn't been the Celtic Renaissance, it would have been 
 a scheme to make Scotland truly national by thatching 
 all the roofs with porridge ; or an effort to arouse the 
 American Indians to drive out the invaders with their 
 coloured quills and impassioned poems ; or he might 
 have written a book about the play of colours on 
 icebergs and the moral effects on the Laplanders. 
 Poor old Ireland just happened to be the flower on 
 which the bee from his bonnet has settled for the 
 time." 
 
 " You are an Irishman, aren't you ? " Drusilla asked. 
 
 " Dublin," Racie said, suddenly grave, with a touch 
 of pride. " I went in for * literature.' I got a posi- 
 tion on The Glasgow Evening Mercury by answering 
 an advertisement. The puzzle is to find the connec- 
 tion between Literature and the Mercury." 
 
 He drawled with a weary air, and Drusilla, intrigued 
 by his inexpressive face, stood, a smile hesitating on 
 her lips. She was aware that Grace, getting into con- 
 versation with a woman and child, had parted from
 
 THE IMPRISONED PRINCESS 69 
 
 Michael, who had drawn nearer to Racie. She noticed 
 the brightness of Michael's smile to his friend. 
 
 Racie's fear was that Michael would ask Miss 
 Trathbye to come to the meetings of the Eire Club : 
 he went on, chaffing, trying to prevent an exhibition 
 of Michael's ridiculous earnestness. 
 
 " Patriotism does as well as any other illusion, 
 especially when one's away from home. I know a 
 fellow who has a very high ideal of filial duty : it's 
 because he's an orphan." 
 
 " Don't mind him, Miss Trathbye," Michael said, 
 astonished at his own ease in addressing her. " He'll 
 have it that no real Irishman has faith in Ireland." 
 
 " Well, my mother's a real Irishwoman," Drusilla 
 said in her shy childish way of speaking. " And she's 
 always saying that everything in Ireland is better and 
 nicer than here." 
 
 " May I ask how long your mother has lived out of 
 Ireland ? " Racie said. 
 
 " Oh, a long time nearly all my life," Drusilla told 
 him. 
 
 " Ah ! " Racie said. 
 
 Drusilla, flushing, laughed ; and Michael Quentin, 
 saying again : " Don't mind him," laughed too. There 
 came to him moods of joy, of a confidence in life 
 as a triumph of friendship, of youth and banter, of 
 shared enthusiasms. 
 
 The hall was nearly empty now, and they were 
 moving to the door : in her embarrassment, troubled 
 by the sphinx-like calm of Racie's face, the girl drifted 
 towards Michael. 
 
 " Mrs. MacNulty has a lot to say to Miss Morland, 
 surely," Racie said with the throaty utterance that 
 sometimes took him unawares.
 
 70 THE ROSE-COLOURED ROOM 
 
 " Oh, Miss Morland takes a great interest in that 
 kid," Michael said. " She's very fond of children 
 isn't she, Miss Trathbye ? " 
 
 Drusilla was not fond of children : she felt vaguely 
 that Michael might consider the love of them an ideal 
 attribute. 
 
 " I don't know," she said. " We haven't been friends 
 very long." She wondered why Michael looked pleased ; 
 then wondered why she had felt a wish to be regarded 
 as Miss Trathbye rather than as Miss Morland's friend. 
 
 " The kid's an orphan," Racie put in in his quiet 
 voice. " Miss Morland has been very kind to him. 
 She's awfully kind, Miss Morland." 
 
 " Awfully kind," Michael repeated. 
 
 " Very generous," Racie said. 
 
 Did these young men quite like Grace ? . . . Did 
 
 she herself quite ? Drusilla gazed at the group 
 
 of three the wide-mouthed woman, shawled, the 
 brown-haired boy of five, Miss Morland, tall, in her 
 loose grey coat, a green woollen cap on the black hair 
 which was already lined with grey. She was saying 
 good night to the woman and child now; and suddenly 
 she caught the boy in her arms and held him close 
 with his face hidden in her neck. . . . Leaving the 
 hall, she turned to wave to the shawled woman and 
 her gaze lingered. . . . Grace had fine eyes, with 
 irises of an admirable violet and porcelain-like whites. 
 Looking now into them, dark in the paleness of Grace's 
 face, Drusilla surprised a terrible look of suffering such 
 as comes for a deathly thing done or a vital thing left 
 undone. 
 
 Something in Miss Morland's past ? Something 
 with a man in it ? His voice broke bidding her fare- 
 well, his eyes overflowed, his hand shook. . . .
 
 THE IMPRISONED PRINCESS 71 
 
 They were in the street now, Drusilla's shyness 
 keeping her in shelter by Michael, who was not so 
 handsome nor so sarcastic as his friend. 
 
 " D-do you go on the subway ? " Michael asked 
 with a stumbling eagerness. 
 
 " Sometimes," Drusilla replied solemnly. " But 
 I like the car best." 
 
 " Do come on the car," Michael said. " Do you 
 live near Miss Morland ? " He was hoping that the 
 two girls dwelt many miles apart. 
 
 Behind them Racie who had none of the sustained 
 conversational brilliancy that Drusilla feared in him 
 was asking Grace if she went on the subway. . . . 
 The four of them mounted to the roof of a car and 
 Michael bought tickets. The car began to move west- 
 wards through a web of golden lights. Michael saw 
 Drusilla's face fitfully illumed and shadowed. Always 
 there was the wonder that a thing so beautiful should 
 endure for the returning of his gaze. 
 
 Racie and Miss Morland had risen and were stum- 
 bling towards them : they went down the stair, swayed 
 this way and that by the swinging of the car. At the 
 corner where Drusilla's homeward way parted from 
 Grace's they stood and talked ; Grace ostentatiously 
 familiar with the young men, calling them " you boys," 
 using their abbreviated names. Drusilla listened to 
 all this with wonder. Should she ever call young men, 
 not blood relations, by such diminutives as " Racie " 
 and " Mick " ? 
 
 Grace's check-key chuckled in the lock, her 
 " Good night ! " and the slam of the door startled 
 the stillness of the long row of house-fronts, half 
 obliterated by the mass of trees mourning in the 
 wind. Michael and Racie, with Drusilla between
 
 72 THE ROSE-COLOURED ROOM 
 
 them, walked on in a direction that Michael already 
 knew. 
 
 They mounted the slightly sloping street under a 
 dark blue sky, with high indigo blocks of buildings on 
 either side. The street lamps showed, blurred golden, 
 veiled in the misty blueness. The sound of traffic 
 came faintly from wider streets behind them, still 
 pulsing and flowing with the passion of the city's 
 life. 
 
 Racie looked inquiringly at Michael, who paused at 
 Number Twenty-three. 
 
 " Yes, it's here," Drusilla said. 
 
 " You're next door to Mr. Patullo," Racie informed 
 her. 
 
 Drusilla did not deny it. 
 
 " I don't suppose you know him ? " Racie said, as 
 if the suggestion of such a thing were an impertinence. 
 " He's the treasurer of the Eire." 
 
 " I know him just by sight," Drusilla said. Racie 
 was already condemning his own heedlessness in again 
 mentioning the Eire Club. But the good-nights were 
 said without Michael asking Drusilla to join. 
 
 Drusilla had no key. She clicked the letter-box 
 and rang the bell ; and was answered by a wrathful 
 sniff inside the house and the dragging of reluctant 
 feet. The door was jerked open, and Aunt Caroline, 
 in a blue and black dressing-gown and with rubber 
 curlers in her hair, could be seen flouncing into the 
 parlour. Drusilla frantically closed the door. 
 
 " Where on earth have you been ? " Aunt Caroline 
 exclaimed, then sank into mutterings. ..." A nice 
 hour of the night near twelve might remember 
 others have got to get up in the morning and go out 
 to work. We all can't . ."
 
 THE IMPRISONED PRINCESS 73 
 
 " Nonsense. It's not eleven yet. You've no right 
 to tell untruths," Drusilla said. 
 
 She was amazed at her own spirit. And Aunt 
 Caroline, as if amazed too and acquiescing in some- 
 thing changed, shuffled back to her chair-bed without 
 even mentioning the chaining of the hall-door. 
 
 Michael and Racie, in silence, walked to Mrs. 
 Wylie's door. 
 
 " Isn't it a beautiful night ? " Michael said. . . . 
 " Lovely." 
 
 Racie looked at his shining eyes, smiled faintly, and 
 went. . . . After all, Michael Quentin had money 
 he could afford to make a fool of himself. 
 
 Ill 
 
 Drusilla remembered that she had been smoking : 
 cachous occurred to her as a means of deceiving her 
 family. She looked about, saw a chemist's shop, and 
 entered. Dr. Alexander Cowie came from the back 
 of the shop. 
 
 Drusilla had met Cowie five times at the five meet- 
 ings of the Eire Club which she had attended during 
 the months of June and July. It became impossible 
 to buy cachous. 
 
 " My consulting-rooms are here, you know," Cowie 
 explained, " and Mr. Barrowman's away for tea, so 
 I'm rushing into the breach." He smiled socially 
 with an air of being ready for a talk. His expression 
 was habitually self-confident, yet Drusilla noticed for 
 the first time an emotional modesty in him. He had 
 coloured a little, though the thunderous July weather 
 had faded the pink in his cheeks, and his eyes were 
 rather shy and (she thought) very pretty. They were
 
 74 THE ROSE-COLOURED ROOM 
 
 like a doll's eyes, with their round blue-grey irises and 
 the thick dark lash-fringe above and below them. 
 She sought something to say. 
 
 " There was rather a small attendance on Thursday, 
 wasn't there ? " 
 
 " Oh, you know, Miss Trathbye," Cowie said, " it's 
 a mistake to have the meetings so far into the summer 
 when the evenings are long and light. People want 
 to be out enjoying theirselves." Cowie put a sugges- 
 tion of roguishness into his tone and Drusilla smiled. 
 
 " I think it's rather a pity always to drop things in 
 the summer," she said. " There are such a lot of 
 empty evenings. ..." Her voice faded away as she 
 thought that she was exposing the dullness and 
 poverty at home : it was abominable not to have 
 friends and resources like other people. 
 
 But Cowie was looking at her rather strangely, with 
 a kind of eagerness and pleasure. She had an im- 
 pression that he checked something that he was about 
 to utter ; then he said : 
 
 " That is so, no doubt. But every one doesn't think 
 as you do, Miss Trathbye. There's very few that take 
 a real interest in littery matters. ..." A boy came 
 in to buy a bottle of iron tonic and Cowie served him, 
 after some searching and doubtful conjectures about 
 the chemist's prices. " Barrowman's an old school 
 chum of mine," Cowie explained to Drusilla. " He 
 and I were at school together : he's rather struggling 
 but a thoroughly good fellow, and my best friend." 
 Cowie, with his slow pompous manner of utterance 
 and his deep voice, had an air of conferring a diploma 
 on Barrowman by this speech. 
 
 Drusilla, interested, looked round the meagrely 
 stocked little shop. Since their first meeting she had
 
 THE IMPRISONED PRINCESS 75 
 
 thought of Cowie as a rather piquant creature. He 
 was a doctor, just beginning practice, he had told her, 
 and he was quite unlike her idea of a doctor quite 
 unlike the two other doctors that she knew. Cowie 
 seemed to Drusilla to have passed through his uni- 
 versity life without absorbing any sort of culture ; and 
 this surprised her very much for, in her uneducated 
 state, she thought of culture as the necessary accom- 
 paniment of education. It was puzzling that Cowie 
 should speak as he did ; and puzzling, but admirable 
 and quaint, that he should be so utterly contented 
 with himself, with his lot, with his friends. If Drusilla 
 had been offered a wish by a suddenly appearing 
 fairy, she would probably have spoken, without a 
 moment's sounding of the depths of her heart, the 
 thought that lay constantly near to the surface : " Let 
 me get away ! " To what, was vague : from what 
 was definite and sure. It was singular that Cowie, 
 apparently so young and vital, should feel neither 
 yearning nor disgust. 
 
 This was one of the thoughts that Drusilla had 
 about Alexander Cowie. Others were that he was 
 seemingly sociable and popular, that he (probably) 
 lived in a little flat or cottage, that his people were 
 (probably) " rather awful " ; also that he was good- 
 looking and dressy with a common smartness and 
 trimness. But the truth is Drusilla had thought very 
 little about him and would have thought less had not 
 the human lives familiar to her been so few. Cowie's 
 commonness, his unashamedness, put him outside of 
 the clique of persons whom the Trathbyes considered 
 their equals. Mrs. Trathbye would not have taken 
 Cowie seriously as an acquaintance ; and neither did 
 Drusilla take him quite seriously. He was a mongrel
 
 76 THE ROSE-COLOURED ROOM 
 
 kind of doctor, whose consulting-room was at the back 
 of a chemist's shop, and whose dress was not that of 
 a doctor but of a typical Glasgow " Johnnie " one 
 of those young men who " swanked " on the pave- 
 ments and in the tea-rooms of Sauchiehall Street 
 and Buchanan Street. 
 
 " I don't think, you know," Cowie said, " that 
 Quentin's quite a success as Chairman. You want a 
 go-ahead man with bright ideas for a thing like a 
 littery."- 
 
 " Mr. Quentin doesn't want the Eire Club to be an 
 ordinary literary club," Drusilla objected. 
 
 " That's so, of course," Cowie said mechanically, 
 and went on as if she had not spoken. " People go to 
 a littery to be livened up, not to be put to sleep. That 
 paper we had on Thursday, for instance yon's not 
 the sort of thing to take, you know. I wonder Moore 
 doesn't take the thing in hand himself." 
 
 " Mr. Moore ? " 
 
 " Yes. He's on The Mercury, you know," Cowie 
 said with an important air. " Very quiet chap, but 
 I'd think he must have more practical go-ahead ideas 
 than Quentin." 
 
 Drusilla felt angry and contemptuous. The 
 Mercury ! 
 
 " But the Eire Club's for Irish people," she said. 
 " It's to study Celtic literature." 
 
 " Oh, he'll never make anything of that," Cowie said 
 undisturbed. " He'd be better to keep an open door. 
 No one could be more interested than I am in the 
 Celtic spirit," he added with his air of solemn propriety. 
 " It gets closer to Nature than the Sassenach can : 
 I'm a bit of a Celt myself : one of my grandmothers 
 was a Ross-shire woman. . . . But an ideal littery
 
 THE IMPRISONED PRINCESS 77 
 
 ought to aim at combining the Celtic animation with 
 the more solid qualities. . . . Quentin's too much of 
 an autocrat. Mind you, I'm not a Socialist ; I've 
 no sympathy with sentimental talk about equality. 
 A strong man is the man that's got to lead. But 
 Quentin isn't a strong man : he'd be better to listen 
 to the opinions of a committee." 
 
 Drusilla had come to understand something of what 
 was happening to the Eire Club : she shared Michael's 
 sense that the club was being taken from him with a 
 slow sureness, and altered to the club of Alexander 
 Cowie. Cowie, who had " dropped in " at the club at 
 a casual word of a friend, and come again because the 
 evening of meeting was more convenient to him than 
 that of his own " church littery " ! Cowie was domi- 
 nating by virtue of his power of supplying what the 
 other members expected. And this mysterious thing 
 was happening while Michael and Drusilla watched. 
 
 " Well, he founded the club and it's his money," 
 Drusilla attempted. 
 
 '* That's just it," Cowie said with a triumphant air. 
 " Folks like Quentin always think you can do any- 
 thing with money. You can't." 
 
 Drusilla, in her annoyance, had opened a glass case 
 on the counter, and begun to compare tooth-brushes. 
 She looked up, arrested by the dominance in Cowie's 
 tone. She was struck by a suggestion of power in him. 
 What was it ? She tried to determine if the fresh soft- 
 ness of his cheeks and lips, the dewiness of his eyes, 
 were simply the painting of youth and health and 
 happiness on forms that were in reality strong and 
 harsh. But like most people she found it difficult to 
 distinguish lines from hues. 
 
 " Beg pardon, were you wanting one of those ? "
 
 78 THE ROSE-COLOURED ROOM 
 
 Cowie said. He bent over the counter and for a mo- 
 ment their heads were rather close together. Brasilia 
 heard Cowie utter a sniff, and she quickly drew 
 back. 
 
 " Yes," she said, " I'm forgetting it's after four 
 o'clock and I must get home. I'm to bring something 
 for tea." She laughed, as people do when speaking of 
 household things which they treat with the utmost 
 solemnity. Cowie was still slowly examining the 
 tooth-brushes, his red underlip projecting and a frown 
 drawing his brows together. Suddenly he looked up 
 and asked abruptly : 
 
 " Do you see much of Miss Morland, Miss Trath- 
 bye?" * 
 
 " I've just been to see her," Drusilla answered with 
 another uneasy laugh. 
 
 " So I thought," Cowie said dryly. He held out the 
 bunch of tooth-brushes. " That's rather a nice one ? 
 Do you want it hard or soft ? Barrowman ought to 
 leave the prices marked on things when he goes away 
 to his tea. ... I say, don't you learn anything from 
 Miss Morland." 
 
 " Learn ? . . . " Drusilla faltered. 
 
 " Yes. She's been teaching you to smoke, hasn't 
 she? . . . She won't teach you anything that's nice." 
 
 Drusilla's eyes flashed into Cowie's flushing face : 
 the blood, always vividly in evidence in her cheeks, 
 surged up her temples and brow. . . . Cowie still 
 awkwardly held the tooth-brushes. It was as if 
 prompted by a nice dramatic instinct that Barrowman 
 entered the shop at this moment. 
 
 " I don't know what right. ..." Drusilla was 
 muttering, not knowing what more she was going to 
 say. She selected a soft, black-haired brush, a thing
 
 THE IMPRISONED PRINCESS 79 
 
 she detested. Eagerly, with a vindictive snobbish 
 sense of forcing Cowie into the position proper to him, 
 she offered him ninepence. Cowie made a gesture 
 towards Barrowman, who took the money. 
 
 Drusilla, with a sense of defeat, bowed and left the 
 shop. She hurried into a baker's and bought some 
 crumpets. As she walked on, her anger, which was 
 half embarrassment, subsided, and she even smiled. 
 Cowie's rebuke had made an appeal to her femininity : 
 she felt vaguely that it was a kind of compliment. 
 She began to imagine little developments of the scene 
 things that might have happened, that might have 
 been done and said if Barrowman had not come back. 
 Cowie's speech had been a stimulating surprise : she 
 sent her memory back and found that she could re- 
 member, almost exactly, each occasion on which she 
 had seen Cowie, and how he had looked and what he 
 had said. . . . And her thoughts refused to stay with 
 him but went to Michael Quentin. 
 
 Alexander Cowie ! He was simply an impertinent 
 chemist. A suggestion of the counter clung about 
 him about his clothes and boots and moustache. 
 Even his rose-coloured cheeks and the soft shining 
 of his eyes had something cheap and showy. But 
 Michael Quentin 
 
 Drusilla found that she had no precise neutral record 
 of her few talks with Michael. He had slid into her 
 life quietly : it already seemed natural to believe that 
 he had always been there. Had he not indeed always 
 been there a dimly formed ideal which had fed the 
 hunger of her heart ? Not like other men not like 
 any one else. She felt that she did not need to explain 
 herself to him. She had a complete faith in his kind- 
 ness : he did not excite nor frighten nor intrigue her
 
 80 THE ROSE-COLOURED ROOM 
 
 as other people did. Her heart rested contentedly 
 on the thought of him. . . . 
 
 " Miss Trathbye ! " 
 
 It was Cowie running after her. He made up on 
 her, panting, forgetting to lift his hat. Drusilla 
 walked along beside him, not looking at him. 
 
 " Miss Trathbye, I suppose I've offended you," 
 Cowie said indignantly. ..." I suppose you think 
 I'd no business to say that ? " 
 
 " I was surprised," Drusilla said coldly. A silence 
 followed, and she knew that she would hold a 
 stronger position if she said nothing : but a curious 
 and apparently disproportionate excitement urged her 
 into speech. 
 
 " It wasn't a nice way to speak about a lady," she 
 said, tremulously squeezing the bag of crumpets. 
 " And it was ridiculous, of course. . . . Still, that has 
 nothing to do with it. You don't know me, you're 
 practically a stranger. ..." 
 
 " I know what I'm talking about," Cowie said 
 almost violently. " Miss Morland well, I'm saying 
 nothing against Miss Morland but she isn't your sort." 
 
 " How do you know what my ' sort ' is ? " Drusilla 
 asked, an involuntary little quaver of laughter in her 
 voice. 
 
 " I've eyes in my head," Cowie retorted. He was 
 rough, vulgar, almost brutal : the arch gallantry of 
 the literary society wit and ladies' man was gone from 
 him. " I'm saying nothing against Miss Morland, 
 mind : she can do as she pleases : but you're different." 
 
 " You mean / can't do as I please ? " Drusilla 
 rippled. 
 
 Cowie glanced at her unsmilingly. 
 
 " I mean you're different from Miss Morland," he
 
 THE IMPRISONED PRINCESS 81 
 
 said. " She can do as she likes. But you're younger 
 and . . . ' Cowie's voice died away into an un- 
 characteristic mutter. 
 
 " I don't see what my age has got to do with it," 
 Drusilla said, with a base sort of pleasure in his other 
 meaning that she guessed. 
 
 " You're more attractive," Cowie said grudgingly. 
 " At least to some people. I don't mean you're ob- 
 viously attractive to the man in the street." 
 
 Drusilla felt angry : she did not search for the exact 
 reason, but told herself again that Cowie was im- 
 pertinent. 
 
 " Suppose we leave my personal appearance out of 
 the conversation," she said. 
 
 " Oh, beg pardon. Beg pardon, I'm sure," Cowie 
 said huffily. They walked without speech for a few 
 minutes ; then he spoke in a different tone : 
 
 " I suppose it's kindness makes you take up with 
 her. I think you could not be anything but gentle 
 and kind. . . ." 
 
 " What nonsense ! " Drusilla said in a touched 
 surprise : for he spoke earnestly and his face had 
 flushed. " If there's any kindness I suppose it's on 
 her side." 
 
 " Oh, I say \ " Cowie exclaimed. 
 
 " Well, it is in a way. She knows far more about 
 things than I do : her life's far fuller. She has ever 
 so many more friends ..." 
 
 " Oh, I say ! " Cowie repeated ; with a reverent 
 sort of amusement as if at a beautiful innocence. 
 " Who told you she'd such a lot of friends ? " 
 
 " She did herself," Drusilla replied crushingly. 
 
 Cowie laughed loudly in an irritating way ; and 
 Drusilla again reminded herself of that great social gulf
 
 82 THE ROSE-COLOURED ROOM 
 
 between them. ... It was rather an enfeebling thing 
 to find that Cowie had absolutely no consciousness of 
 the gulf's existence. 
 
 " When folks have lots of friends they don't go 
 about bragging about it," Cowie said. 
 
 Drusilla felt the truth of this and the sudden search- 
 ing flash which it turned on Grace's case. Drusilla 
 rebelled against the cruelty of it undeserving 
 Respectability's harshness to the outcast and the 
 questionable. 
 
 " Suppose she has no friends ? " Drusilla broke 
 out. She was beginning to see that she had been 
 too credulous of Miss Morland, but was hardly 
 aware of, or willing to admit, the extent of the 
 delusion. 
 
 " It's nothing against a person to have no friends," 
 she went on with cheeks aflush. " Some of the best 
 and greatest people who have ever been on the earth 
 have been friendless." 
 
 " Who ? " Cowie inquired. 
 
 There was a silence. Drusilla could not think of 
 any examples. 
 
 " Shelley," she suggested presently. 
 
 " I don't admit Shelley was a good man," Cowie 
 said. " Have you read his life ? " 
 
 " No ... but ..." 
 
 " I'm glad you haven't," Cowie said, smiling. The 
 patronage of the smile was exasperating, but it con- 
 tained something bright and tender something that 
 allured her. She thought again that Cowie was good- 
 looking with pretty eyes. 
 
 " I don't mean that Miss Morland comes into the 
 same category as Shelley," he said. 
 
 " No ? " Drusilla uttered, ironical.
 
 THE IMPRISONED PRINCESS 83 
 
 " No," Cowie said solemnly, as if much depended 
 on his judgments. " Miss Morland's all right as far as 
 I know : only she's not your sort. She's a bit fast. 
 I don't approve of ladies smoking and wearing dresses 
 that show their limbs." 
 
 " Do you approve of them having limbs ? " Drusilla 
 asked. Cowie disregarded her. 
 
 " Those militant suffragettes ..." he said. 
 
 " Oh, I thought we'd get to that ! " Drusilla ex- 
 claimed. " Miss Morland is a suffragette, but she 
 isn't militant. She'd be glorious if she were. She'd 
 be glorious if she did anything with her whole heart." 
 
 Cowie looked at her, sideways, with a strange, shy 
 look. 
 
 " Suppose a woman did something else with her 
 whole heart would you think that worth while, Miss 
 Trathbye ? " 
 
 Even in his awkwardness Cowie kept the pompous 
 utterance of the church literary society. His deep 
 voice, with the rising inflection, reminded Drusilla of 
 his inevitable " Mr. Chairman ? " and the giggles of 
 his female admirers at the club. 
 
 " What sort of thing ? " she asked laughingly. 
 
 " Suppose she were to give her whole heart to 
 loving a man," Cowie faltered. ..." Would you call 
 that glorious ? " 
 
 ** Yes ! " Drusilla said, with a kind of grave triumph. 
 
 They walked on, the melting asphalt pavement 
 under their feet, the hot, whitey blue sky above. On 
 either side of the wide street in which they were there 
 were shop-fronts, of bright variegated hues ; and 
 above the gay shops the windows of countless dwell- 
 ings, curtained or uncurtained, open or closed, with 
 or without window-boxes full of blooms. The electric
 
 84 THE ROSE-COLOURED ROOM 
 
 cars, cleanly and hardly coloured as enamelled toys, 
 rolled and crashed along their rails, with the ping ! 
 of bells and the quick, clipped directions of the guards. 
 A piano-organ by the kerb rippled with melody, the 
 nodding, smiling head of the Italian girl who turned 
 the handle joining in the suggestion of an exuberance 
 of pleasure. To Drusilla and Cowie the whole scene 
 was just now dear and beautiful, full of the mystery 
 and romance of life. They walked on in silence till 
 they reached the corner of the narrower, sloping street 
 in which the Trathbyes lived. Then Cowie said, in a 
 low voice : " Thank you " ; and they met Aunt 
 Caroline coming up the street. 
 
 Drusilla introduced Cowie to her aunt, and then re- 
 membered that The Lady's Circle said that you should 
 not introduce people in the street : she wondered if 
 Aunt Caroline, too, remembered this and was gloating 
 over the blunder. But Aunt Caroline, like the women 
 at the Eire Club, seemed sensible of Cowie's charm. 
 
 " He's a nice fellow," she said, as Cowie, straight 
 and trim, went off with his casual lift of the hat. 
 
 " Yes," Drusilla said, not hearing her. 
 
 Cowie got on to one of the bright, clean cars one 
 with orange and lemon colours and sat on the top, 
 smoking cigarettes while he was being carried home- 
 wards. He smoked from habit and because he had a 
 feeling that he must appear decently composed. His 
 habitual content was glorified into exultation, his 
 cheerfulness into radiance. He had asked : " Miss 
 Trathbye, would you not call it a fine thing for a 
 woman to love a man with her whole heart ? " or 
 words to that effect ; and she had answered : " Yes." 
 Not meaninglessly, not in mere general acquiescence. 
 How divinely she had said it, with what a resonance of
 
 THE IMPRISONED PRINCESS 85 
 
 triumph, in what an abandonment of heart revelation. 
 " Yes ! " . . . He re-created the sound of it again and 
 again as the car bore him homewards. Lights were 
 beginning to blossom in the city ; and every light had 
 a new meaning for him. The city was no longer 
 merely a home, a dear pleasant place for work and 
 play, for friendships and those singular relationships 
 styled " business connections." It had become a 
 place full of the mystery and romance of life, of latent 
 raptures, terrors, and enmities. The heart of God 
 pulsed in it. 
 
 Drusilla was looking out from the open parlour 
 window. She saw a haziness of blue distance, of 
 sheeny, dull blue roofs and dimly coloured stone ; 
 heard a heavy hum and clatter, far off from the 
 Trathbyes' quiet side street. Here and there a win- 
 dow glimmered yellow, and the street lamps spangled 
 the twilight. Drusilla could smell the blossom of an 
 elder-bush in a grass-plot three stories below her ; and 
 its fragrance blended into her dreamy sense of summer, 
 of sweetness. She lingered, loving the dusty blueness, 
 the huddled houses, the scurr of feet on the pavements. 
 She thought of all the mystery and romance that the 
 city held : she heard in the streets the footsteps of the 
 God of Love : she felt the pulsing of his heart. 
 
 But she did not think of Alexander Cowie : because, 
 when she had said : " Yes ! " she had been thinking of 
 Michael Quentin.
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 THE BUGLES OF THE CHAMPIONS 
 
 THE morning post had brought the Trathbyes two 
 envelopes. One contained a letter from John, Mrs. 
 Trathbye's son, who was still in Ireland. Mrs. Trath- 
 bye's husband had been the owner of an attenuated 
 property which had come down to him through a long 
 line of more or less distinguished, and more or less 
 reckless, ancestors. Mr. Trathbye had not been able 
 to cope with the troubles that he had inherited ; and 
 after a long wearisome life of lawsuits, of hunting, 
 shooting, and fishing, and, latterly, of defending him- 
 self against his wife's reproaches, he had died when 
 John was twenty. Several of Mrs. Trathbye's chil- 
 dren had been short-lived, and when John was enter- 
 ing his young manhood, his sisters were little children. 
 Examination of Mr. Trathbye's affairs showed that 
 they were in a wretched state, only one scrap of pro- 
 perty, a portion of the moorland village of Croaghnai- 
 hill, in County Galway, being legally claimable by his 
 heir. 
 
 " Ah ! I wish we could get out of this ! " Mrs. 
 Trathbye repeated. She had said it often before : it 
 expressed the spirit which had animated her during 
 most of her married life of disappointments, failures, 
 joys, and blunders. She had that curious optimism 
 regarding changes in the disposal of material things 
 which sometimes co-exists with a complete pessimism 
 regarding human motives and achievements. She did 
 not believe that any good thing could be found in her 
 husband's people, nor indeed in any people : but the 
 
 86
 
 THE BUGLES OF THE CHAMPIONS 87 
 
 scenes of her married life had been for so long asso- 
 ciated with her chagrins that it seemed to her, im- 
 patient, that the inanimate surroundings must have 
 absorbed all the enmity of fate. " Let us get out of 
 this ! Let us get away ! " she had said over and over 
 again ; angrily sometimes, but never in truth with 
 enough of bitterness to urge her to translate her speech 
 into action. She knew in her heart that she had often 
 been happy, that the place was alive with memories 
 that clung to her with warm hands. She had a vague 
 delight in being somebody with an honour that was 
 independent of poverty, debts, and lawsuits : she had 
 a fear, more vague, of the world beyond, though she 
 was incapable of knowing that there she would be 
 rated as a nobody. So she had said : "I wish we 
 could get away : we'll never do any good here ! " 
 and had remained in love with her ill-luck, tending her 
 fowls in the yard, playing with her living children in 
 the charming half-wild garden, visiting the graves of 
 her dead children in the churchyard. But when her 
 husband died Mrs. Trathbye found that circumstances, 
 perhaps maliciously, perhaps in mere stupidity, in- 
 sisted on granting her expressed wish. She was 
 practically obliged to go : she had three little girls 
 who John said plainly would eat up all that there 
 was. And Mrs. Trathbye's hesitation was in John's 
 opinion made a crime by the receipt of a letter from 
 a distant cousin, a poor relation, a disgraceful, kind 
 faithful creature, who, many years ago, had started a 
 boarding-house in Glasgow. Let Mrs. Trathbye put 
 her own fifty pounds a year into the boarding-house. 
 Let her take the little girls and, when they became 
 older, have them taught " to do something " there. 
 Above all, let her take Aunt Caroline, who would . . .
 
 88 THE ROSE-COLOURED ROOM 
 
 be useful in the boarding-house ... in many 
 ways. . . . 
 
 Mrs. Trathbye went, taking with her the three 
 children, a servant for the boarding-house, and the 
 superfluous Caroline ; an unfortunate creature, a 
 young woman who had succumbed to the first touch of 
 aunt-hood ; whom no one expected, or wished, to get 
 married, she herself least of all. John's dread was 
 that she might be left on his hands, and he had pro- 
 tested stormily against his mother's idea that Aunt 
 Caroline should remain to keep house for him. Even 
 after she had been taken away he apprehended her 
 return. 
 
 Mrs. Trathbye and Caroline went in a vortex of 
 feelings, grief, shame, hope, and an innocent exultation 
 in their own activity, an innocent fanciful curiosity 
 regarding the strange city to which they were going. 
 Drusilla, who was seven at the time, and Essie who was 
 six, remembered well the wonders, the fusses and 
 fatigues at Greenock on the Clyde in the early morn- 
 ing ; the grey-greenness of the sky and the river, the 
 shining of the wet pier, the groanings and gasps of 
 the big steamer, the loud weeping of Aunt Caroline, 
 broken down with weariness and homesickness and 
 unkindly questioned about the tickets which in her 
 anguish on the boat she had mislaid. 
 
 " Take our name," Mrs. Trathbye had said haughtily 
 to the unimpressed official. But the tickets had been 
 found, in Aunt Caroline's squashed little black bag, 
 beaten into a sort of pulp with remains of bananas and 
 meat sandwiches. Drusilla could always re-create 
 with a pang so poignant that it was almost love the 
 desolate dowdy figure, the cold little hands groping 
 in the bag, the sudden flash of happy relief lighting
 
 THE BUGLES OF THE CHAMPIONS 89 
 
 up the meagre face ravaged by sea-sickness and 
 sorrow. 
 
 The Trathbyes lived for four years with the poor 
 relation ; quarrelling, taking offence, losing money, 
 and every now and then forming plans for vaguely 
 " going away altogether." At the end of the fourth 
 year the poor relation died, and, for two years, Mrs. 
 Trathbye and Aunt Caroline " ran " the boarding- 
 house themselves. " Ran " was the word that they 
 used afterwards when they spoke of this matter : but 
 the truth is that the thing did not run it hobbled, 
 with a gait that was ever more blundering and feeble. 
 At the end of the second year it was closed, and Mrs. 
 Trathbye, relieved from immediate anxieties but vul- 
 garised and embittered, retired with Aunt Caroline 
 and the children into a three-roomed flat, where they 
 must exist on Mrs. Trathbye's fifty pounds a year and 
 the odd sums that Aunt Caroline earned by contribut- 
 ing to the cookery and household columns of various 
 Irish papers. Aunt Caroline had tried several times 
 to obtain what she called " a situation " ; answering 
 advertisements almost, it seemed, at random, so 
 utterly unfitted was she for the work specified. At 
 intervals, especially when she had a disagreement with 
 Mrs. Trathbye, she still put her name down on the 
 books of registries and trudged to mystical appoint- 
 ments. But she was never engaged nor, indeed, would 
 she have known what to do had such a thing happened. 
 The recommendation from one of her Irish editors an 
 old family friend to whom she owed all her little ac- 
 ceptances secured her a regular monthly column on a 
 Wicklow paper. " It will clothe her," Mrs. Trathbye 
 said to the girls ; and Caroline, who was always 
 clothed rather than dressed, compiled " pars " about
 
 90 THE ROSE-COLOURED ROOM 
 
 etiquette, fashion, and food. She did give a little to 
 household expenses and so, later, did Essie and Kath- 
 leen, trained as typists : but Mrs. Trathbye, in her 
 eagerness to dominate, spoke always of her fifty 
 pounds as if it were their whole income. They had 
 moved to a slightly larger flat when Kathleen had 
 begun to earn. Drusilla was " at home." She had been 
 for a year and a half in a situation in an art shop, 
 where she had learned some needlework and mar- 
 queterie staining ; and, as she had a talent for design 
 and colouring, her prospects had been good. But her 
 mother had suddenly and inexplicably removed her 
 from the shop. A family silence shrouded this 
 incident. 
 
 It was now seventeen years since the Trathbyes had 
 left Ireland ; and during these years John had been 
 occupied in losing the poor sums that he had inherited. 
 He was still the owner of the row of huddled cottages 
 in Croaghnaihill, County Galway. He had passed 
 frantically from lawsuit to lawsuit in his attempts to 
 show that the land could not belong to the persons 
 who had purchased it. There was a desperate fore- 
 boding of the time when " family " should count for 
 nothing, in his yielding to circumstances so far as to 
 search for a post : but he could find none suitable to 
 John Trathbye, whose forefathers had all been gentle- 
 men. Besides, the poor fellow could do nothing ex- 
 cept ride sublimely. He had been educated to the 
 idea that the word " family " is symbolic of a sacred 
 fact. It had not occurred to him that it would be wise, 
 even at his age, to learn to do something and to make 
 a living by his own efforts. He preferred to stay in a 
 place in which he was known, respectfully spoken to, 
 and occasionally blessed. The delusion that " John
 
 THE BUGLES OF THE CHAMPIONS 91 
 
 Trathbye " stood for some eternal truth, a manifesta- 
 tion of the great Mystery of Blood, kept him from 
 realising that he was a jaded man, shabby, with 
 countrified clothes and dirty nails ; lounging at corners 
 with drivers and grooms, drinking in the forlorn inn, 
 playing cards with the red-eyed wheezing old canon 
 who officiated in the little Episcopalian Church. John 
 stayed at Croaghnaihill, living meagrely in the two- 
 storied cottage at the end of the row, running up bills 
 at the single local shop, writing to his mother and 
 sisters for " loans." 
 
 That John might not stay at Croaghnaihill was, 
 indeed, just one of the things that Drusilla and her 
 sisters feared. In their childhood they had thought of 
 him as a matter for pride. Copying then* mother, 
 they had talked about their property in Ireland and 
 their big brother there. Then, as Drusilla grew older, 
 she had been more and more transpierced by the sense 
 of inconsistencies in her mother's speeches. Mrs. 
 Trathbye had humour, and it played the devil with 
 her sometimes, freakishly, suddenly, in the midst of 
 her solemn humbugging. She must break out into 
 mockery of the family property the six one-storied 
 cottages and the tall two-storied one, facing the bare 
 climbing road, the dry-stone wall, and the purple moor 
 at Croaghnaihill. Drusilla had a distinct enough 
 memory of the poor place : she had often sat on that 
 wall, with the westering sun on her face and its nimbus 
 of hair, and, looking over the moor to the shrill silver 
 streak of the sea, had dreamed and wondered. 
 
 For years she had thought of John as a big hand- 
 some fellow. Aunt Caroline, even more than Mrs. 
 Trathbye herself, spoke emotionally of his good looks, 
 his talents and charms.
 
 92 THE ROSE-COLOURED ROOM 
 
 " John's a gentleman," Mrs. Trathbye said, as if it 
 were matter for tears. " John, poor fellow ! " was an 
 exclamation to which the girls had become accus- 
 tomed on the receipt of his mournful letters. They 
 had formed the habit of standing under his photo- 
 graph admiring it ; partly in the courtierism of chil- 
 dren desiring to be in favour with their elders, partly 
 because the barrenness of their lives demanded the 
 forcing of some sort of blossom of idealism. It was in 
 a mood of rebellion, when she had been slapped and 
 thrust from her mother's presence, that Drusilla had 
 first questioned John's beauty. Standing under his 
 picture she had found him long-faced and small-eyed 
 and had exulted in the daring heresy. Mrs. Trathbye 
 had a habit of saying that Drusilla was not at all 
 like John, and the girl felt that, to say any one was 
 like John, was, in Mrs. Trathbye, a mark of love. . . . 
 . . . Drusilla's loss of faith in John had synchro- 
 nised with the discovery that there was something in 
 her own appearance that made her mother dislike her. 
 Oh, sometimes, only sometimes ! her heart protested. 
 She supposed for some time that it was because she 
 had red hair. She had heard her mother say once, 
 with a bitter rage, that an evil-wisher had foretold 
 that she should have a red-haired child ; and Drusilla 
 began to be jealous of Essie and Kathleen and John 
 because their hair was brown. 
 
 But the power of John waned slowly. His visits in 
 those early days had been festivities. The best room 
 in the house was given up to him ; and as the Trathbye 
 girls had grown up and their demands for space in- 
 creased, the sacrifices made for him became more and 
 more difficult and obvious. Mrs. Trathbye and Aunt 
 Caroline rejoiced in them in a kind of religious rapture.
 
 THE BUGLES OF THE CHAMPIONS 93 
 
 The girls acquiesced in them, more and more dully, as 
 they emerged from their childhood's ignorance and ser- 
 vility. They saw John as a creature little interested 
 in them and not interesting to them ; a creature 
 who smoked and ate and drank and " made trouble," 
 doing nothing in exchange. They began to be wary 
 of " lending a few shillings to poor John." They 
 began to be ashamed of his queer clothes and ill-cut 
 hair and his speech, which every year seemed more of 
 a brogue. They lost belief in his power to " get a good 
 berth " : they were sceptical about his letters to people 
 who " might be useful to him." It was a relief to 
 them that he came more seldom, though they tried 
 to hide the guilty feeling when they saw their mother 
 and Aunt Caroline disappointed and weeping. Drusilla 
 especially was glad when John did not come. For, 
 her mother's tyranny having refused to let her become 
 a business girl, she must see John in the most ab- 
 horrent intimacy must remove the littered tray after 
 he had breakfasted in bed, must sort out his soiled 
 linen, empty his hand-basin with bits of paper, dabbed 
 with soap -froth from his razor, floating on the water. 
 . . . Always, Drusilla could make herself feel sick by 
 recalling John's room as it was on the mornings of one 
 of his visits the odour of tobacco, the pipe, the empty 
 beer-bottle from the night before, the tumbled bed, 
 the comic papers with ugly little pictures. She had 
 grown more and more resentful at the sight of John 
 eating in his inelegant manner the only piece of 
 meat or fish on the table, while his female relatives 
 ate potatoes or egg sandwiches. Essie and Kathleen 
 shared this indignation ; but they were more cautious 
 than Drusilla, less sensuously refined, and less con- 
 stantly witnesses of the excesses of sex-worship
 
 94 THE ROSE-COLOURED ROOM 
 
 practised by their mother and Aunt Caroline. It was 
 therefore at her eldest daughter that Mrs. Trathbye 
 looked in defiance as she said : 
 
 " Poor John. . . . He'll not be able to come to us 
 this summer." 
 
 Kathleen and Essie looked relieved : their holidays 
 began in a few days, and they had been saving money 
 out of their salaries. They avoided each other's eyes, 
 but their mouths relaxed into pleasantness. 
 
 " Poor John, things aren't going very brightly with 
 him," Mrs. Trathbye said, wiping her eyes. The girls 
 became slightly depressed ; and Aunt Caroline, with 
 an air of considering other people's feelings, put her 
 own letter under her plate. 
 
 " Has he heard anything about that situation ? " 
 Drusilla ventured, for the sake of seeming interested 
 in John. 
 
 " Ah agh ! " Mrs. Trathbye uttered fiercely. " He's 
 as anxious to get a situation, poor fellow, as you are 
 for him to get one. A person would think, to hear you 
 talk, that he was going through all this for amusement." 
 
 " People that dp nothing always talk in that way," 
 Aunt Caroline said. 
 
 Tears came into Drusilla's eyes ; for her obstinate 
 sensitiveness survived the roughest treatment. Essie, 
 with a suggestion of sympathy in her face they had 
 a common cause against John offered her sister a 
 piece of toast. 
 
 " I made that for t/<m," Aunt Caroline said. 
 
 " Well, I haven't time to eat it," Essie said as she 
 rose, glancing at the clock. 
 
 Aunt Caroline made her absurd little shoulder- 
 lifting movement, and muttered as her habit was. A 
 few words came articulately ..." something else to
 
 THE BUGLES OF THE CHAMPIONS 95 
 
 do than be making toast for people that have nothing 
 to do " . . . " getting up in the morning to make 
 toast for people " . . . " going down on my knees at 
 the fire, and burning all my face, this broiling weather, 
 to make toast. . . ." 
 
 " John says he went into Dublin last Friday about 
 that position," Mrs. Trathbye said in quite a lively 
 tone. She read on and began to laugh. " He says 
 Moir's Hotel was dreadfully full and he had to sleep 
 on a horsehair sofa in another man's room. He says 
 the man was a publican." 
 
 " Mercy 1 " Kathleen said. 
 
 Aunt Caroline took her letter from under her plate, 
 and fingered it, flushing and looking wistfully. No 
 one asking a question, she turned to Mrs. Trathbye. 
 
 " This is an invitation to Lady Cairne's garden- 
 party," Aunt Caroline said with a self-conscious shake 
 of her head. 
 
 " Mercy ! " Kathleen exclaimed, ironical. 
 
 Aunt Caroline began to laugh : she was fluttered 
 and exalted. 
 
 " It's as representative of The Lady's Circle" she 
 said, when they had all examined the card and Mrs. 
 Trathbye had read it aloud. 
 
 " ' In aid of the Friends of the Helpless,' " Mrs. 
 Trathbye repeated. " What is that, Caroline ? " 
 
 " It's some kind of society for encouraging kindness 
 to animals," Aunt Caroline said. 
 
 " Mr. Quentin belongs to it," Drusilla said. 
 
 " Some kind of mad thing, I suppose," Mrs. Trath- 
 bye said with a teasing laugh. " Goodbye ! Good- 
 bye, darling ! " she shouted in response to Essie and 
 Kathleen. The door slammed behind them, the 
 letter-box clanking.
 
 96 THE ROSE-COLOURED ROOM 
 
 " What in the living earth are you going to wear, 
 Caroline ? " Mrs. Trathbye exclaimed rather than 
 asked with a solemn devoutness. Drusilla was listen- 
 ing, interested : she sat at the table, facing the two 
 other women. The radiance of sleep and dreams still 
 lingered about her : her cheeks and eyes were bright : 
 the splendid hair, loosely tied with a blue ribbon, 
 was fluffy and sunlit. 
 
 " I can't go," Aunt Caroline said. " How can I 
 go ? I haven't a stitch to put on me." 
 
 " Of course we all knew you'd say that," Mrs. 
 Trathbye jeered. " You've as much as any of us 
 here." 
 
 " I wasn't saying anything about that," Aunt 
 Caroline said. " We've all little enough, I'm sure." 
 Her voice shook and she wiped her eyes. Mrs. 
 Trathbye began to laugh and Drusilla could not help 
 joining her. 
 
 " Your grey dress ought to do, Aunt Carlie," 
 Drusilla said, compunctious, as Aunt Caroline com- 
 pletely broke down. " If you'd a new hat. . . ." 
 
 " Agh, I've no money to be getting new hats," 
 Aunt Caroline said. The exact amount of her 
 earnings was hidden from her family, and she always 
 declared that she had " no money." " My grey 
 dress isn't fit to be seen." 
 
 " Could you wear my biscuit-coloured costume ? " 
 Drusilla asked. " I'll lend it to you." 
 
 For a moment, Aunt Caroline's peaked little face 
 lighted up : then she said : " Agh, I could live in it ! " 
 Aunt Caroline, for some occult reason, was proud of 
 her leanness. 
 
 " You might make it do, Caroline," Mrs. Trathbye 
 suggested. " It's good-natured of her to offer you
 
 THE BUGLES OF THE CHAMPIONS 97 
 
 the loan of it. Not that she's very careful of her 
 clothes," she added, qualifying the commendation. 
 " You'd think she'd had that costume ten years 
 instead of one." 
 
 " I've had it nearly three years I " Drusilla blazed 
 out. " Aunt Carlie needn't take it if she doesn't 
 want it. It's far too long, of course." 
 
 "I'll try it on," Aunt Caroline said, rather alarmed 
 at the idea of the offer being withdrawn. 
 
 The biscuit-coloured costume a ready-made, be- 
 stowed on Drusilla with many warnings and moral- 
 isings looked absurd on Aunt Caroline's little figure, 
 narrow-chested, long-necked, round-shouldered. She 
 was singularly uncritical of her own appearance and 
 would have worn the thing : but Drusilla was almost 
 frenzied in her efforts to prevent it ; and Mrs. Trath- 
 bye, after animatedly contradicting her daughter, 
 gave it as her own opinion that Caroline would be 
 a fright in the coat and skirt. 
 
 Aunt Caroline resigned herself to wearing her own 
 thin black costume, buying a lace jabot for the neck. 
 She had a dreadful sun-damaged old toque that she 
 wore with the blacks on Sundays. Drusilla who had 
 a very pretty knack in trimming a hat offered to re- 
 make the toque. But her mother flouted the sug- 
 gestion. " She'd never finish it," Mrs. Trathbye said 
 to Aunt Caroline. " She'd just take it to pieces and 
 leave it for some one else to put together again. ..." 
 Yet in the evening they gave the toque to Kathleen, 
 who took it to pieces and dusted it, then went here 
 and there seeking suitable needles and thread and " a 
 bit of something " for the renovation of the toque. 
 Finally, after heating attempts, she lost her temper 
 and left the thing in a heap on the parlour table ; 
 
 o
 
 98 THE ROSE-COLOURED ROOM 
 
 and Mrs. Trathbye and Essie found Aunt Caroline 
 late at night, blind with crying, and the three of them 
 botched the straw and silk and the bunch of blue 
 plums into something that was worse than what the 
 toque had been, but different. . . . 
 
 II 
 
 It was of these and other trivial things that Drusilla 
 was thinking on a day in August, the day of the garden- 
 party. She sat in the kitchen, which was on the 
 eastern side of the tall tenement building, and, at this 
 hour in the afternoon, lighted evenly with a clear 
 greyness. Sounds from the flats alongside and below 
 and from the stairs came through the frail walls. The 
 window gave a view of a back-green with red-brick 
 outhouses roofed with concrete ; and beyond that the 
 back-gardens, leafy and flowery, of villas in a higher 
 street. Mrs. Trathbye, with a sick headache, was in 
 bed, and Drusilla was watching the brown enamelled 
 kettle on the gas-ring. She was fond of cosy chairs, 
 but avoided the old rocking-chair just as she avoided 
 the touch of Aunt Caroline herself. Drusilla sat on a 
 wooden stool, her hands clasped round her knee, and 
 her higher foot, in a blue stocking and neat cheap 
 black velvet slipper, slowly swinging to and fro. Her 
 eye for effect, her joy in her own person, co-operated 
 with her beauty ; it was wonderfully easy for her 
 to look " dressed." Her two-year-old print dress, 
 blue finely speckled with white, and the vivid hues 
 of her head and face had a luminous effect in the 
 quiet clean kitchen, barely furnished and greyly 
 lighted. 
 
 Essie and Kathleen were enjoying their holidays,
 
 THE BUGLES OF THE CHAMPIONS 99 
 
 boarding at a farm-house in Arran, paying for the 
 change with money saved during the working months 
 of going to and fro, in heat and chill, in rain and fog ; 
 of catching cold on the platforms of overcrowded 
 electric cars, of eating insufficient lunches in tea-rooms. 
 Drusilla herself had had a little " change," a visit of 
 a fortnight to friends at Portobello : it had cost 
 nothing but the price of her ticket, it had been a little 
 slow, but ..." You ought to be glad of the chance," 
 Aunt Carlie had said. " Other people have to pay 
 for their holidays and get a lot of clothes ready." 
 Drusilla' s grave red mouth widened in a laugh, as she 
 thought of the preparations made by Kathleen and 
 Essie, the merry shifts, the jests and hopefulness of 
 pleasure, the joy in the money safe from John's 
 rapacity. In holiday-time Essie and Kathleen seemed 
 just two dear jolly girls, piteous in their endeavours. 
 If they were on holiday for a much larger proportion 
 of their time ? If somebody somehow could seize 
 on their lives and carry them away from out of the 
 vortex of drudgeries ? . . . Aunt Caroline, too, ap- 
 peared as a creature clamant for rescue : Drusilla's 
 lips again suddenly lost their beautiful curve of 
 mournfulness. It was laughable, the memory of 
 Aunt Caroline as she had been this afternoon in the 
 madness of her preparation, in the dumb excitement 
 of her exit. The emptiness of the old rocking-chair, 
 the sight of Aunt Caroline's account-book and 
 fountain-pen on the topmost of the three little book- 
 shelves on the kitchen wall, made Drusilla realise how 
 seldom Aunt Caroline went anywhere. There was 
 pathos in the account-book, from which a certain 
 number of leaves were neatly torn for the rough copies 
 of the column in The Lady's Circle. It was amazing
 
 100 THE ROSE-COLOURED ROOM 
 
 that any paper should print such rubbish, botched 
 together and regularly despatched with a painstaking 
 faithfulness. . . . Drusilla visualised Aunt Caroline 
 at the garden-party, taking notes, absurdly cowed and 
 servile, clad in her frowsy black and that travesty of 
 a toque, with long protruding hat-pins. Mrs. Trath- 
 bye regarded her sister-in-law's work with a mingling 
 of shame and complacency : it was " lady's " work 
 and insured them against the disgrace of Caroline's 
 seeking of menial situations : but even Mrs. Trathbye, 
 with her ignorance of life and her sensitiveness to 
 the hypnotism of words, felt that the phrases " jour- 
 nalistic capacity," " literary work," and " correspon- 
 dent of The Lady's Circle" did not succeed in creating 
 the illusion that Caroline was a dignified social unit. 
 Yet she had a kind of dignity. Drusilla realised 
 this, vaguely and suddenly, as her gaze, swooping 
 towards the now singing kettle, paused again on the 
 lank account-book and the fountain-pen. There was 
 a little space allotted to these articles in a house in 
 which space was a thing for which people fought. 
 She thought of scores of instances in which her mother, 
 her sisters, and her aunt had seemed to form a com- 
 bine to oppose the housing of her little properties 
 her books, her work-basket, her drawing-board, her 
 hat-box. Tears came childishly, as she told herself 
 that it was unfair to blame her for not " taking an 
 interest " in her clothes when she was not allowed 
 even a peg in a wardrobe or cupboard, but must keep 
 her garments which she loved in a dreadful crumpling 
 old basket. Essie and Kathleen were granted space 
 for their dresses and coats, their boots and work, 
 their fancies and experiments in hat-dyeing or potting 
 plants. But Drusilla was afraid even to wash her
 
 THE BUGLES OF THE CHAMPIONS 101 
 
 handkerchiefs unless Aunt Caroline and her mother 
 were out. 
 
 " It's because they earn money," Drusilla thought. 
 " Aunt Caroline earns money. . . . Only a little . . . 
 but it goes on coming." Then, illuminative, came 
 the thought : " People never respect you unless you're 
 earning money. It's the basis ... in all sorts of 
 human intercourse." Drusilla exulted in this ex- 
 pression : she was, then, becoming consciously 
 articulate as the result of her studies and the dis- 
 cussions at the Eire Club, the conversations during 
 the walks home. " Right economic relations ..." 
 The phrase came to her, jostling others, such as 
 " cubic space," " right of a human being to a place 
 in society." She had struggled through an oppressive 
 pamphlet by a German Socialist a book which Miss 
 Morland had recommended to her and lent, with 
 uncut leaves. Drusilla remembered that this German 
 Socialist had said that there were only two great kin- 
 dred problems Wage-earning and the Sex Problem. 
 
 Wage-earning money the power to make one's 
 own living, to be able to buy lovely clothes and pay 
 for a place in which to keep them daintily. One 
 could have nothing without paying for it. ... But 
 Wage-earning was not all. According to the German 
 Socialist, there was also the Sex Problem. 
 
 Drusilla, seated on the stool, was thinking intensely. 
 It was strange, for example, that just now she should 
 have seen Aunt Caroline, Essie, and Kathleen as 
 pitiable creatures whose cases cried for rescue ; while, 
 almost in the same moment, their economic soundness 
 should have appeared to her, the validity of their 
 claim to house-room and to the respect of their fellows. 
 If Wage-earning were the only problem, then Aunt
 
 102 THE ROSE-COLOURED ROOM 
 
 Caroline, Essie, and Kathleen were enviable to her. 
 But the presence of the Sex Problem might do some- 
 thing to remove the apparent inconsistency ? The 
 German Socialist had said that the Sex Problem was 
 inseparable from the Wage-earning Problem. . . . 
 Dmsilla tried to focus the light rays streaming from 
 this enormous fact so that they might make clear her 
 own little life. 
 
 She was beginning to understand, she thought. 
 Economically, her position was inferior to Essie's, to 
 Kathleen's, even to Aunt Caroline's : but sexually 
 she was their superior. . . . How had that old German 
 made out that there was a necessary connection 
 between sex and money ? She remembered some of 
 the things he had said, so new to her that her wonder 
 and interest had absorbed her : she had had no room 
 for horror. . . . He had spoken of women's beauty 
 as a thing that could be bought and sold ; he had 
 called women's bodies " Capital." 
 
 Drusilla rose startled by a sound somewhere. It 
 may have been only the squealing of a pulley in the 
 flat below ; but it sounded so like a moan that she 
 went to her mother's room. 
 
 " Mother, are you all right ? Did you call ? " 
 
 " Ah, how can you ask if I'm all right ? " Mrs. 
 Trathbye muttered. She was lying in a mass of 
 crushed pillows and twisted bedclothes. The windows 
 had been shut to keep out the relentless noises of the 
 streets the shouts of a vendor of " Veec-tor-ee-a 
 plums ! " the jingle of a madly driven milk-cart, the 
 screeching laughter of a group of message boys and 
 girls. 
 
 " Can't I go out and get you something ? " Drusilla 
 asked, coming near to the bed, longing for the right to
 
 THE BUGLES OF THE CHAMPIONS 103 
 
 tend and fondle her mother. ..." It's awfully light," 
 she went on, looking at the pale green canvas blind 
 suffused in sunshine " I might put something up." 
 
 She brought a screen from the parlour and placed 
 it, dark and tottering, across the window. Doing this, 
 she caught sight of her figure in the glass of the ward- 
 robe door the only long glass in the Trathbyes' flat. 
 She paused, assuming poses, enjoying the beauties of 
 her shape, the colours seen subduedly in the dim 
 light, the strong blue of the cotton frock, the golds 
 and reds of the hair. She heard a movement in the 
 bed. 
 
 " That's all right : go away," Mrs. Trathbye said 
 in the tone of one tortured. " Thanks," she added 
 gently. 
 
 Drusilla went to the bedside and kissed her. Mrs. 
 Trathbye's face was hot and discoloured : her hair 
 was scattered about it, scanty, a mingling of fair brown 
 and grey. She often told her daughters that, in her 
 youth, her tresses, of a bright golden, fell to her knees ; 
 and the girls pretended, to her, to each other, and 
 each to herself, that the thing was believed. 
 
 Mrs. Trathbye's hot lips clung to Drusilla's. 
 
 " You're a good girl a good child," she faltered 
 hysterically. 
 
 Drusilla was easily moved to tears : she went back 
 to the kitchen crying, full of ruth. Lately almost 
 suddenly it had become possible for her to understand 
 something of the struggle that was going on in Mrs. 
 Trathbye's heart ; and her mother's life took on the 
 colour of tragedy. Long hair even apocryphally 
 golden long golden hair and all those other beauties 
 of which she and her sisters had been told again and 
 again at bedtime ; and her mother's career as the
 
 104 THE ROSE-COLOURED ROOM 
 
 result 1 Mrs. Trathbye said that she had been married 
 at nineteen, though the statement hardly tallied with 
 her accounts of many pre-marital love-affairs and a 
 broken engagement : but she had certainly been 
 married while she was, by modern standards, a young 
 girl. She had married a man with property, a man 
 beyond her expectations as a dowerless orphan of 
 good family. She spoke reservedly, with a modest 
 cynicism, of men and marriage ; and Drusilla had 
 heard her mention cases of passionate love seldom and 
 always with an angry abhorrence. This fear of facing 
 the question of love was the only sign that Mrs. 
 Trathbye had ever given that Love was a thing which, 
 as a reality, could touch her. The long broken un- 
 coloured years of her life had passed unlighted, un- 
 shaken by Love. She had never done, nor inspired, 
 anything beautiful or wicked and strange. It seemed 
 fitting that Aunt Caroline, Essie, and Kathleen, 
 should ask of life only varying amounts of littleness : 
 but Drusilla felt that it ought to have been different 
 with her mother, once so sweet and handsome, still 
 so vivid and proud. It was peculiarly piteous that 
 these sordid, disproportionate beggings of hers should 
 be futile. A woman to whose milky throat and long 
 shining hah* a score of young men in Ireland had 
 written poems and this alien modern city jauntily 
 offered her a flat in a slim-walled tenement, and an 
 insufficiency of food, fire, and clothing. 
 
 Drusilla thought sorrowfully that the only way of 
 ministering to her mother now lay hi the satisfying of 
 these bodily needs. The time for beauty and wicked- 
 ness and wonder was gone : the only improvement 
 that could be made in her mother's mental atmosphere 
 without making it too rarefied for her present self,
 
 THE BUGLES OF THE CHAMPIONS 105 
 
 was the introduction of the sense of social safety and 
 the modest importance that comes of the power to 
 run up accounts and engage domestic servants. Mrs. 
 Trathbye was no longer ambitious save to have 
 " enough to come and go on " : she had lost much of 
 her personal daintiness. She would (Drusilla thought) 
 be contented with a little more room, a little more 
 food and fuel and clothing ; and she ought to have 
 a good doctor and an occasional change to the seaside 
 or the country : she ought to be able to go for a drive 
 sometimes and to the play of which she had once been 
 excitably fond. . . . Was that all ? It sounded so 
 " practical." 
 
 The girls too, and . . . Aunt Caroline. So little 
 was needed to make them much happier and, con- 
 sequently, much more agreeable social units. Essie 
 and Kathleen too liked the theatre : they liked 
 dancing, and tennis, and reading novels, and lying in 
 cosy chairs by the fire : they were easily satisfied in 
 such matters as dress and social intercourse. Drusilla, 
 adding up the family earnings, concluded that, if she 
 could gain a salary twice as big as Essie's or Kath- 
 leen's, it would lift them over the line between the 
 thing called economy and the thing called comfort. 
 They could keep a servant ! 
 
 But she could not get a salary. Her mind paused 
 on the thought, with a sense of something left out. 
 Just now, in her loving, sentimental mood, she did 
 not want to realise how and why she had been left 
 incapable of earning what the Socialist called a 
 " living wage." There were things in her life that 
 she must leave wilfully uncomprehended if she was 
 going to feel tender and happy and protective to her 
 family. And she needed to feel so : her heart was too
 
 108 THE ROSE-COLOURED ROOM 
 
 quarter's rent, and the necessity of emptying ash-pans. 
 She had since her childhood breathed in an atmosphere 
 of unconscious cynicism regarding everything poetic- 
 ally fine ; and, since her heart must have fine things 
 to feed on, she had learned to go, when she was hungry, 
 to a place of dreams where she was fed. Her dreams, 
 but Michael Quentin's realities ! At any rate, " which- 
 ever was which," a quite distinct line in Drusilla's 
 consciousness parted them. Her own dream of Love 
 and the view she accepted of marriage were, in her 
 thoughts, no more co-operative than were the ideal of 
 conduct of her mother's cherished Prayer Book and 
 the morality of life in the Trathbyes' flat. A long 
 course of snubbing, of under-feeding, physical and in- 
 tellectual, of the witnessing of failures, blunderings, 
 and futilities, had inoculated Drusilla with something 
 of the family hopelessness. Her mysteriously strong 
 vitality fought against it, as did her deeply hidden 
 sense that she had really come into the world for the 
 sake of an unknown divine thing to be found : but 
 the poison worked in her blood, forbidding her to 
 expect anything beautiful, wicked, and wonderful 
 anything that was not petty and meagre. Marriage, 
 considered in what Mrs. Trathbye would have called a 
 " sane " way, or perhaps a " nice " way marriage 
 was a change for the better in one's material circum- 
 stances. It meant that one was supplied with a house 
 of one's own and with housekeeping money ; and that 
 one had dresses and presents and was kissed and made 
 much of and handed over to a nice good man who 
 would thereafter take care of one. ... Of course 
 Mrs. Trathbye would stipulate that the man must be 
 nice and good : she fiercely condemned men and 
 women who were wicked who ran away with wives
 
 THE BUGLES OF THE CHAMPIONS 109 
 
 or husbands, who stabbed sweethearts, or flung 
 themselves into the river. . . . 
 
 Well ! . . . Alexander Cowie was, apparently, a 
 nice good man. An arch smile broke up the serious- 
 ness of Drusilla's face, changing its sweet bemusedness 
 into mirth. It had become clear to her that Cowie 
 admired her. Since their dispute he had written her 
 a letter, ostensibly apologetic, but full of personal 
 opinions and details. He had written again, thanking 
 her for replying, sending a book : he had called to leave 
 another book one day when she had been out in the 
 park with a girl friend, a neighbour's daughter. He 
 was shyly anxious to walk home with her from the 
 meetings of the Eire Club. 
 
 Suppose she were to marry not exactly Alick 
 Cowie, of course, but some one very like him ? Her 
 fancy carelessly hailed the idea, appearing and re- 
 appearing in the mists of her half-formed thoughts : 
 she allowed it to develop, for the first time, into a 
 thing that it was permissible to imagine. She shrank 
 from certain details and, inconsistently, was boldly 
 realistic regarding others. Thus she pleased herself 
 with rehearsing the words of her fictional reply to 
 Cowie's or the man like Cowie's fictional declara- 
 tion of his wish ; but she flinched, flushing, from 
 precise wording of his declaration itself. She fancied 
 his gifts to her bunches of pink and purple sweet- 
 peas which she would fasten in the belt of this 
 blue, white- speckled frock ; boxes containing soft 
 kid gloves and embroidered handkerchiefs ; boxes 
 of chocolate creams, in seductive rows, under 
 fuzzy mats of paper. She made mental pictures 
 of jaunts with him sails and coach drives in which 
 one or more of her relatives might share, visits
 
 108 THE ROSE-COLOURED ROOM 
 
 quarter's rent, and the necessity of emptying ash-pans. 
 She had since her childhood breathed in an atmosphere 
 of unconscious cynicism regarding everything poetic- 
 ally fine ; and, since her heart must have fine things 
 to feed on, she had learned to go, when she was hungry, 
 to a place of dreams where she was fed. Her dreams, 
 but Michael Quentin's realities ! At any rate, " which- 
 ever was which," a quite distinct line in Drusilla's 
 consciousness parted them. Her own dream of Love 
 and the view she accepted of marriage were, in her 
 thoughts, no more co-operative than were the ideal of 
 conduct of her mother's cherished Prayer Book and 
 the morality of life in the Trathbyes' flat. A long 
 course of snubbing, of under-feeding, physical and in- 
 tellectual, of the witnessing of failures, blunderings, 
 and futilities, had inoculated Drusilla with something 
 of the family hopelessness. Her mysteriously strong 
 vitality fought against it, as did her deeply hidden 
 sense that she had really come into the world for the 
 sake of an unknown divine thing to be found : but 
 the poison worked in her blood, forbidding her to 
 expect anything beautiful, wicked, and wonderful 
 anything that was not petty and meagre. Marriage, 
 considered in what Mrs. Trathbye would have called a 
 " sane " way, or perhaps a " nice " way marriage 
 was a change for the better in one's material circum- 
 stances. It meant that one was supplied with a house 
 of one's own and with housekeeping money ; and that 
 one had dresses and presents and was kissed and made 
 much of and handed over to a nice good man who 
 would thereafter take care of one. ... Of course 
 Mrs. Trathbye would stipulate that the man must be 
 nice and good : she fiercely condemned men and 
 women who were wicked who ran away with wives
 
 THE BUGLES OF THE CHAMPIONS 109 
 
 or husbands, who stabbed sweethearts, or flung 
 themselves into the river. . . . 
 
 Well ! . . . Alexander Cowie was, apparently, a 
 nice good man. An arch smile broke up the serious- 
 ness of Drusilla's face, changing its sweet bemusedness 
 into mirth. It had become clear to her that Cowie 
 admired her. Since their dispute he had written her 
 a letter, ostensibly apologetic, but full of personal 
 opinions and details. He had written again, thanking 
 her for replying, sending a book : he had called to leave 
 another book one day when she had been out in the 
 park with a girl friend, a neighbour's daughter. He 
 was shyly anxious to walk home with her from the 
 meetings of the Eire Club. 
 
 Suppose she were to marry not exactly Alick 
 Cowie, of course, but some one very like him ? Her 
 fancy carelessly hailed the idea, appearing and re- 
 appearing in the mists of her half-formed thoughts : 
 she allowed it to develop, for the first time, into a 
 thing that it was permissible to imagine. She shrank 
 from certain details and, inconsistently, was boldly 
 realistic regarding others. Thus she pleased herself 
 with rehearsing the words of her fictional reply to 
 Cowie's or the man like Cowie's fictional declara- 
 tion of his wish ; but she flinched, flushing, from 
 precise wording of his declaration itself. She fancied 
 his gifts to her bunches of pink and purple sweet- 
 peas which she would fasten in the belt of this 
 blue, white-speckled frock ; boxes containing soft 
 kid gloves and embroidered handkerchiefs ; boxes 
 of chocolate creams, in seductive rows, under 
 fuzzy mats of paper. She made mental pictures 
 of jaunts with him sails and coach drives in which 
 one or more of her relatives might share, visits
 
 110 THE ROSE-COLOURED ROOM 
 
 to the theatre, dances. She would always, or nearly 
 always, insist on one of the others going too : that was 
 " nice." She would tell Cowie the young man like 
 Cowie to dance with Essie and Kathleen and to 
 introduce his friends to them ; and she happily 
 visualised herself and her sisters, warm-cheeked and 
 twinkling-footed, in their white frocks. ... It was 
 not at all difficult to fit a figure like Cowie's into such 
 scenes. Cowie " composed " quite well with the life 
 with which she was familiar and the people whom she 
 knew. Cowie had already said : " Your aunt seems 
 a good-natured old body " ; had asked Drusilla if her 
 sisters went to " business," and was simple and casual 
 in his allusions to milkmen and high teas. To con- 
 front him with bare soapy arms would not astound 
 him. Drusilla's family would have a sense of con- 
 descending to the Cowies. There would be no strain- 
 ing, no necessity for repulsive little concealments ; 
 and his standards of morality and refinement not, 
 it seemed, exhaustingly high would allow of little 
 inferiorities to which she had become accustomed. 
 Cowie himself would (she thought) see no harm in her 
 getting presents out of him he would smile at the 
 pretty femininity and childishness of it. ... It 
 would be all sensible and nice and sisterly and daugh- 
 terly and Drusilla's smile came again at the suggested 
 word " niecely." It would set her free and give the 
 others more room and more food, she supposed ; and 
 it would make them very kind to her : people in the 
 novels and ladies' journals were always tender and 
 smiley to a girl about to be married. And the demands 
 of the man like Cowie would be easy to fulfil. A nice 
 decent young man with those mysterious solid qualities 
 which were said to last long after passion had fluttered
 
 THE BUGLES OF THE CHAMPIONS 111 
 
 itself to death. . . . There was no room for Love in 
 a tenement ! It meant the soiling and breaking of 
 his wing-feathers. 
 
 Drusilla rose quickly, not noticing that the kettle 
 had begun to boil. Crossing the kitchen and hall she 
 thought that she heard again, twice repeated, the 
 sound of a moan. She listened, standing exquisitely 
 poised and glowing-haired, in the wedge of light from 
 the half -open kitchen door ; and the sound resolved 
 itself into a subdued uncomfortable cough. It was so 
 close to her that Drusilla started : she realised that it 
 came from outside the hall-door and thought of hook- 
 ing the chain or turning the key. " Strange man " 
 was, in the Trathbye household, a phrase creative of 
 horrors : Mrs. Trathbye and Aunt Caroline spoke 
 with a bitter pathos of their unprotected state. " If 
 a man were to force himself in at that hall-door he 
 might do what he liked to any one of us ! " Mrs. 
 Trathbye said, complaining of the police rates. Aunt 
 Caroline, more physically courageous, had been known 
 to rise up at a noise heard in the night and search, 
 carrying a heavy stick and " trembling from head to 
 foot and with my heart stopped for fully a minute ! " 
 
 Recollections of these absurdities made Drusilla 
 laugh at her own idea of securing the door. The 
 cough came again, followed by a timid drag at the 
 bell : the handle groaned in its socket but the bell 
 did not ring. Another cough came, stifled. 
 
 " It's Mr. Patullo," Drusilla thought, suddenly 
 recognising the sound. " What a time he must have 
 been poking about on the landing ! " 
 
 She opened the door, and saw old Patullo in his 
 fawn coat and with his wretched crush hat in his 
 hand.
 
 112 THE ROSE-COLOURED ROOM 
 
 III 
 
 ** Good afternoon, Miss Trathbye : it's a lovely 
 afternoon," Patullo said in his propitiatory, cultured 
 voice. 
 
 " Yes," Drusilla said. 
 
 " You're all quite well ? Your aunt is hard at 
 work ? I should like a little talk with you if you can 
 spare me a few minutes." 
 
 44 Will you come in ? " Drusilla said, wondering. As 
 they entered the sitting-room the door of Mrs. 
 Trathbye's bedroom creaked. 
 
 " Your aunt isn't in ? " Patullo said, when he was 
 seated in the decadent leathern arm-chair. ' 4 It is 
 partly on her account I called. I hope you will 
 pardon the liberty in a next-door neighbour. The 
 fact is, I think I can put some more journalistic work 
 in your aunt's way." 
 
 44 How kind of you ! " Drusilla exclaimed warmly. 
 She had been thinking that Patullo always spoke in 
 correctly constructed sentences and wondering if this 
 were due to his profession ; and she had been noting 
 the delicacy of his hands and the two long festoons of 
 moustache that hung down at the sides of his unhappy 
 mouth. He sat with his back to the light and she 
 was glad that this somewhat blurred his face. The 
 dirtiness of his clothing offended her, so that there was 
 a touch of compunction in her acknowledgment of his 
 kindness. 
 
 " Not in the least, Miss Trathbye," he said. 4 ' In- 
 deed, I have often thought of asking your permission 
 to call, since you told me, at the Eire, that your aunt 
 was a journalist. I have a good many friends on 
 various papers, you know."
 
 THE BUGLES OF THE CHAMPIONS 118 
 
 " Yes," Brasilia said, having heard him say so 
 often at the club. " What papers ? " she asked, 
 suddenly inspired. 
 
 There was a pause. 
 
 " Several London papers," Patullo said. " And I 
 have local influence as well. I have influence with a 
 very good firm of publishers in London. I might get 
 your aunt some translating work to do. Does she 
 know French and German or Italian ? " 
 
 " No," Brasilia said, her voice shaking to a laugh. 
 Aunt Caroline had been educated thirty-five years ago 
 at a little private school in an Irish village : she could 
 " conjugate " four French verbs from beginning to 
 end, but could not connect them with any other parts 
 of speech. 
 
 " No ? That's a pity. But how about you your- 
 self?" 
 
 Brasilia shook her head. 
 
 " I was taken away from school when I was four- 
 teen," she said pathetically. " I know only the 
 rudiments. I had such a nice teacher." 
 
 Patullo looked shocked. 
 
 " But have you never thought of doing something 
 in journalism yourself ? " he asked, apparently con- 
 ceding that that was a thing which demanded no 
 schooling. 
 
 ; ' Yes," Brasilia answered, sparkling with excite- 
 ment, " I should like it. Funny, just before you came 
 I was wishing I could get some work. ... I spoke to 
 my mother and my aunt about it once before but . . ." 
 
 " You didn't see an opening ? " Patullo said, 
 avoiding her eyes. 
 
 " They didn't want it," Brasilia said, with her 
 puzzled, woe-begone air. She was looking at Patullo 
 
 H
 
 114 THE ROSE-COLOURED ROOM 
 
 expectantly, seeing in his visit a suggestion of the 
 truth that wishes and prayers were realities, potent to 
 strive with depressing material things. Patullo's lids 
 were lowered and he moved in his seat in an ashamed, 
 agitated way. 
 
 " I might get you some work," he muttered. 
 " Your aunt might help you at first, or she and you 
 might collaborate for a while. ..." 
 
 Drusilla checked a giggle. " I shall speak to 
 Quentin about it," Patullo said suddenly, with a kind 
 of effrontery. 
 
 Drusilla stared at him. 
 
 " Quentin's uncle is one of the proprietors of The 
 Teller of Tales" Patullo said. It was a London 
 monthly of high standing and Drusilla' s dazzlement 
 for the moment obliterated her sense of the futility 
 and impudence of an offer to speak to Michael Quentin 
 on her behalf. Why, she herself knew Michael 
 Quentin as well as Patullo did ! There was a sense of 
 escape in the thought that Patullo had spoken in 
 Aunt Caroline's absence : for Drusilla shrank quiver- 
 ingly from the idea of Michael being brought into 
 touch with her home life. 
 
 " But do you know Mr. Quentin very well ? " she 
 asked quickly. It was not possible for her to speak 
 entirely without gentleness, indeed only her anger 
 and alarm enabled her to put the question at all : 
 but Patullo flushed and his white pathetic hands 
 clasped and unclasped. 
 
 " My name has been known to Mr. Quentin for a 
 long time," he said. " I have had ... to do ... 
 with Mr. Moore's paper also. However, I mentioned 
 Mr. Quentin as only one of many possibilities. . . . 
 I have considerable influence in ... other quarters.
 
 THE BUGLES OF THE CHAMPIONS 115 
 
 The question is, Miss Trathbye, if you yourself think 
 you should like work, or if your aunt thinks of ex- 
 tending her connection ? " 
 
 " I should like it very much I wish it very much," 
 Drusilla said fervently. There was a hint of huffiness 
 in Patullo's tone and she blamed herself for her folly 
 in letting this possibly Heaven-sent chance escape her. 
 ". . . But I'm afraid I'm not qualified. . . ." 
 
 " I know your capabilities," Patullo said with that 
 surprising old-fashioned courtly air of his. " I have 
 heard you speak at the Eire." 
 
 It was supremely absurd, for Drusilla had risen 
 twice, once to ask a question, once to supply a quota- 
 tion ; both times timidly, with shaking knees, with 
 the consciousness of being coldly eyed by the other 
 women and only half heard by the occupants of the 
 back benches. She did not infer, however, that 
 Patullo's insincerity in politeness cast any doubts on 
 his good faith hi kindness. And how kind it was of 
 him to come ! a poor, harassed old man lonely and 
 obscure. 
 
 " You write yourself ? " Drusilla said, venturing 
 the question suggested by these thoughts. Why did 
 Patullo not use this " influence " for his own advance- 
 ment ? 
 
 Patullo understood : he flushed again and his veiny 
 white hands made disturbing movements. 
 
 " I write only occasionally : I am otherwise occu- 
 pied. If I had gone in for literature altogether I have 
 no doubt I should have made quite a decent living at 
 it. But circumstances willed otherwise. . . . What 
 is wanted nowadays is young blood." 
 
 Drusilla thought of Aunt Caroline. 
 
 " But I can't write I've never written anything
 
 116 THE ROSE-COLOURED ROOM 
 
 except essays and things," she said. " And sometimes 
 I write letters to newspapers about stray cats and 
 overworked domestic servants and other things I 
 happen to know a little about. I never show them 
 to any one. You see, I've had no education not 
 what people call education. The girl in our dairy was 
 kept at school five years longer than I was, and she's 
 having all sorts of evening classes and singing lessons." 
 She broke off, becoming reserved and defensive. 
 " You see, my mother lost most of her property in 
 Ireland when we were very young and she didn't like 
 to send us to free schools or to mix with . . . funny 
 sorts of children." 
 
 " I see. It's quite obvious to any one who has 
 noticed you and your sisters," Patullo said with a stiff 
 bend of his head. . . . "If you have any doubts on 
 any points of grammar, for example please bring 
 your manuscripts to me. I shall be delighted. In 
 the meantime, I shall write you an introduction to my 
 friend, Mr. Smales, of The Glasgow Newsboy and you 
 might submit some taking pars or a bright little 
 article of about five hundred." 
 
 Drusilla had again a sense of having caught a blue 
 bird only to find that it was a dead one. The Glasgow 
 Newsboy was a futile little paper made up of extracts 
 and a lamentable unpaid " Poetry " column. 
 
 " You'd rather I did not speak to Mr. Quentin or 
 Mr. Moore ? " Patullo said. 
 
 " Oh, please don't ! " There was a note of keen 
 annoyance in Drusilla's tone. "It is so kind of you, 
 but I'd rather you didn't. I shouldn't like to use 
 them and Aunt Caroline's writing would look so 
 ridiculous in The Teller of Tales. . . ." 
 
 She checked herself ashamed ; relieved to know
 
 THE BUGLES OF THE CHAMPIONS 117 
 
 that Patullo had become absent-minded. He rose 
 and moved shiftingly doorwards ; stopped and peered 
 at a folio of reproductions of pictures. 
 
 " It's mine," Drusilla said shyly : a feeling of 
 criminality was associated with the folio, which she 
 had bought with a shilling given her to buy her lunch 
 one day that her mother had sent her into town to 
 pay the gas-bill at the City Chambers. Patullo knew 
 all the pictures and something of the artists : he 
 pointed out the beauties of colouring and composition, 
 even of nude shapes. It was so pleasant to talk with 
 him that, for the time, Drusilla condoned the dark 
 biliousness of his face, the dandruff on his coat-collar, 
 his impure linen, and the odour was it of laudanum ? 
 that came from him. She remembered having read 
 a novel about a woman who formed the opium habit 
 and became dirty in her person. She began to think 
 of Patullo pityingly as a man who had had disappoint- 
 ments and wounds and was trying to drug his heart 
 into dullness. His action in coming had lifted him 
 out of the class of mere neighbours, nonentities who 
 appeared on the stairs and in the passage and dis- 
 appeared into the unknown of their respective flats ; 
 whose lives came into contact with one another's 
 only at the materialistic points of the loss of a latch- 
 key, a puzzlement about a plumber, a quarrel about 
 a cat. 
 
 " Well, we've had a very pleasant chat," Patullo 
 said. " Maybe you'll let me come in again we're 
 near neighbours and our interests are the same." He 
 paused, fumbling in his pockets as Drusilla's hand 
 touched the sitting-room door. " I'll let you have 
 that introduction as soon as I've leisure to write it, 
 Miss Trathbye. I'll make a note of it as I'm such an
 
 118 THE ROSE-COLOURED ROOM 
 
 absent-minded beggar " He drew out a pencil. 
 
 " I may well say that," he went on, laughing and 
 shakily drawing out a bank-book. " Here I am with- 
 out a penny in my pocket, Miss Trathbye ! I found 
 myself short of cash this morning and took this out 
 with me with the intention of calling at the bank. 
 Well, it's been lying perdu in my pocket ever since ! " 
 The later layers of Patullo's life had imposed the words 
 and jests of journals and literary societies on his 
 academic vocabulary : he jarred suddenly on Drusilla 
 as Aunt Caroline did with her ladies' column phrases, 
 " dernier cri" " gorge de pigeon" " a modish thing." 
 . . . Drusilla stood flushing, vaguely uncomfortable 
 with a sense of what was coming. 
 
 " You couldn't oblige me with the loan of half-a- 
 crown till to-morrow ? " Patullo rushed out, quaver- 
 ingly smiling. 
 
 " Certainly," Drusilla murmured, the Trathbye 
 instinct urging her to hide the fact that she had not 
 a half-crown that she did not know how to get one. 
 " Excuse me," she said, and left the room. Opening 
 the door, she had a sense of her mother, dishevelled, 
 fleeing into the bedroom : the door creaked and closed. 
 Drusilla went to the kitchen, where, on one of the 
 shelves for crockery, there was a tin box containing 
 the housekeeping money. She found a florin and 
 brought it to Patullo. 
 
 " I'll look in to give this back to you," he said, 
 giving it a little toss into the air and catching it, as 
 he left the house. " And I'll let you have that letter 
 for Smales : just try him with some bright chatty 
 little things. ..." He tossed the coin again and let 
 it fall, ringing ; and he laughed deliriously as he 
 stooped for it, clutching it with a shaking hand.
 
 THE BUGLES OF THE CHAMPIONS 119 
 
 With a sense of covering something shameful, Drusilla 
 suddenly dismissed him and shut the door. Yet she 
 was inquisitive enough to stand for a minute, listening 
 to his footsteps : he was going downstairs. 
 
 She looked round. The bedroom door was ajar 
 and in the aperture her mother showed ; flushed 
 with tossings of hair about her face, her forehead 
 heavily lined with pain. There was a dreadful look 
 in her eyes : Drusilla had seen it before. 
 
 She tried to speak. If she could manage to tell her 
 mother about the two shillings about Patullo's offer 
 about anything that sounded sane and normal. 
 The terror awakened by that look, with its associa- 
 tions, struck her into speechlessness. If her mother 
 was going to speak again as she had done that time 
 about the art shop, Drusilla felt that she must die. 
 She felt actually faint just now, a darkness coming 
 before her eyes. 
 
 " What's the matter with you ? " Mrs. Trathbye's 
 voice came, sounding far away certainly, but human, 
 with a peevish note in it, with even a touch of motherly 
 alarm. 
 
 Drusilla leaped to her, clasping her. " Mother ! 
 ... Oh, Mother." 
 
 " What a little savage you are ! " Mrs. Trathbye 
 said self-consciously. She went on hurriedly, trying 
 to speak casually, trying to ignore her knowledge of 
 her daughter's horror of the fierce thing that had 
 looked from her eyes : " You shouldn't receive men 
 in that way when there's nobody but yourself. It's 
 not good taste : it isn't nice. ... I heard something 
 of what Mr. Patullo said," Mrs. Trathbye went on 
 with a miserable cunning, " A person can hear every 
 word in this house the noises go through and
 
 120 THE ROSE-COLOURED ROOM 
 
 through me. Why are you against Mr. Quentin 
 helping your aunt ? " 
 
 Drusilla began to cry ; and presently the crying got 
 beyond her control. She had felt able to fight, cruelly 
 if need were, in this matter of Michael Quentin. There 
 was something in her relation with him that gave her 
 courage to scorn trivial tyrannies. But now her 
 strength had gone from her : she felt that she could 
 not recapture her hopeful mood of benevolence. 
 Patullo's coming had been like a promise of help by 
 a means other than marriage : but Patullo and the 
 man like Cowie both seemed now to be merely 
 making a noise like a great blustering of bugles outside 
 of an infrangible barrier. . . . Drusilla felt in a vague 
 blurred way the uselessness of her attempts to solve 
 the Wage-earning Problem. Its solution would not 
 bring happiness. The Sex Problem, a terrible, dark 
 lurking thing had looked suddenly from her mother's 
 eyes. 
 
 " Ah, have done I'm too ill to bear your temper," 
 Mrs. Trathbye said. 
 
 Drusilla heard her mother's slippered feet go softly 
 back into the bedroom. The girl went to the kitchen 
 where the neglected kettle was steaming : she turned 
 off the gas with a kind of rage against it and every 
 hateful uncomprehending thing. She sat on her stool 
 and wept in an abandonment of sorrow, listening to 
 her sobs and wails. She did not care whether the 
 neighbours heard or not through the thin walls. 
 
 Then she rose and looked in the glass : it showed 
 her the beauties of rose and white, of red-brown 
 richly lashed eyes and sweet features, all confused, 
 debased, stained. And she bathed her face, tenderly 
 soothing the poor wronged loveliness.
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 THE HEDGE OF THORNS 
 
 MICHAEL, lying on the hot sand of the beach near The 
 Corner House, was opening a letter. Racie Moore 
 sprawled near him, smoking and holding a volume of 
 Turgeniev. Racie's reading was always a mere 
 skidding and now he had paused between two exquisite 
 pages to roll over on his right side and slant a swift 
 glance at Michael. A line of sand-hummocks sparsely 
 covered with grey-green bent-grass rose between them 
 and the quiet road. Between them and the sea there 
 were long reaches of sand, iridescent, almost fluid, 
 left wet by the tide, which had receded to its uttermost. 
 Birds walked there, crying now and then with a sweet 
 forlornness. The sky and the Irish Sea were mys- 
 teries, opaquely misted, blue-grey and still. It was 
 an afternoon early in September. Racie observed 
 that Michael blushed and a silly expression went 
 stealing over his face. 
 
 " That's from Mrs. Trathbye," Michael said. There 
 was a childlike admission of confusion in his eyes 
 which stared pleadingly at Racie, in his hanging head 
 and the fluctuations of his colour. ..." Miss 
 Trathbye's mother," he said. 
 
 " Oh, is she ? " Racie exclaimed. 
 
 Michael laughed delightedly. " You never let 
 these obvious opportunities pass," he said. 
 
 " We've got to save ourselves up, you know," Racie 
 said, with the touch of bitterness with which he 
 
 121
 
 122 THE ROSE-COLOURED ROOM 
 
 always spoke of his profession. Michael was sensible 
 of it : it made him ashamed : he wanted to do some- 
 thing for his friend to introduce him to the editor of 
 The Teller of Tales to engage him as a travelling- 
 companion. He always found his eagerness battered 
 and brought to limpness against the dead wall of 
 Racie's cynicism, his haughtiness, his indignant faith in 
 his own failure. How could you introduce a writer who 
 wouldn't write who said he couldn't write . . . ? " 
 
 " Beg pardon, Mick what about her ? " Racie 
 asked. 
 
 " She very kindly asks me to call," Michael said. 
 Racie sat up and whistled. The volume of 
 " Fathers and Children " dropped, sank a little way 
 into the soft disordered sand. 
 
 Michael coloured more hotly in anger at the 
 deliberate air of consternation. 
 
 " What do you mean ? " he exclaimed. 
 " Trying to catch that little fellow's note," Racie 
 said, signifying a sand-piper and giving Michael a 
 glance from the corner of his eye. 
 
 " H'm ! " Michael said smiling. " Never mind. . . . 
 Mrs. Trathbye writes about a business matter. I 
 asked her if I might call and hers is in reply. Patullo 
 spoke to me about Miss Trathbye's aunt, who is a 
 writer and wants to get introductions. Patullo 
 thought I might do something for her." 
 
 " On The Teller of Tales ? " Racie exclaimed in a 
 surprise no longer feigned. 
 
 " Yes," Michael said resentfully. 
 
 " Well, I'm well, of all the " Racie rolled 
 
 over, laughing ; then sat up, his coat and hair spat- 
 tered with sand. " Miss Caroline Trathbye is the 
 lady you mean ? "
 
 THE HEDGE OF THORNS 123 
 
 " Yes. Now you're going to tell me you know all 
 about her though a few weeks ago you hadn't heard 
 her name," Michael jeered. " You never make 
 mistakes on The Mercury." 
 
 " The Mercury is one huge mistake," Racie said. 
 " Listen, Mick," he went on, grave. " As a matter 
 of fact, I do know something about Caroline Trathbye. 
 I admit I was ignorant of her name till quite recently. 
 What of that ? One knows things to-day that one 
 didn't know yesterday." 
 
 " Oh, don't argue ! " Michael uttered. 
 
 " I'm merely asserting. We've a man " 
 
 " On The Mercury" Michael said, scornful. 
 
 " An outside contributor. The fellow who does 
 these occasional cartoons. He knows about the 
 Trathbyes. His father has an art business enamel- 
 ling, marquetry, banging brass, you know. Miss 
 Trathbye used to be with him learning art em- 
 broidery." 
 
 Michael had a vision of Drusilla bending over an 
 embroidery frame ; light rimming the red hah*, a foot 
 peeping from under the long folds of a dimly blue 
 gown, rosy finger-tips shining hi and out of a mesh of 
 pied silks. 
 
 "As an apprentice," Racie said, trying to shatter 
 the picture. " She stayed only a year or so. Got 
 work to do at home, or something, or her mother 
 objected to her being in the shop. Quite rightly, no 
 doubt : she's rather a striking-looking girl." 
 
 " Yes ? " Michael said with an awful irony. 
 
 " Oh yes, I think so. Anyway, this fellow's father 
 has known the Trathbyes ever since they came to 
 Glasgow. He boarded with them for a time : Mrs. 
 Trathbye had a boarding-house in Lamb Street."
 
 124 THE ROSE-COLOURED ROOM 
 
 It was another attempt to fade the romance that, 
 Racie suspected, was glowing in Michael's illusionable 
 heart. Racie glanced up from the corner of his eye, 
 looked down again, and went on : 
 
 " The Trathbyes used to have a lot of property in 
 the South of Ireland, you know. There's a son there 
 still. . . . They were rather a wild lot and they ran 
 through everything they had. There's nothing left, 
 it seems, but a row of cottages and a mill that won't 
 work. The son takes after the mill. . . . Mrs. 
 Trathbye found she wasn't equal to the boarding- 
 house and retired." 
 
 " Poor lady ! " Michael said. He had a pitiful 
 vision of Drusilla's mother, a stately and beautiful 
 woman in black velvet and pearls. It did not occur 
 to him that such a costume was unsuited to a boarding- 
 house in Lamb Street : nor did he know the price of 
 black velvet. 
 
 " Umf. . . . They must be pretty hard up," Racie 
 said. " Of course I don't know it's not my business. 
 Mrs. Trathbye may have something of her own and 
 Miss Trathbye probably makes something by her 
 work at home. And one of her sisters is in Cloagh's 
 office Cloagh the writer, you know. I saw her one 
 day I was in on Mercury business a half-grown girl, 
 dark and very plump. I shouldn't have known she 
 was Miss Trathbye's sister." 
 
 Michael was making a tunnel in the sand : he found 
 a broken yellow shell and tried to balance it on his 
 palm. If he had shown anger, outblazed into his 
 characteristic invective against the base estimates of 
 the world in general and The Mercury in particular, 
 Racie would have felt that his tactics had been in 
 some measure successful : but Michael's silence and
 
 THE HEDGE OF THORNS 125 
 
 the smile that pouted his lips seemed to imply an 
 impudent defiance of common-sense. 
 
 " About Miss Caroline Trathbye . . ." Racie said. 
 " Who told you she'd do for The Teller of Tales ? 
 Patullo ? Take my word for it, Mick, Patullo's an 
 old fraud : he forgets his purse too often. . . . Well, 
 never mind. Miss Caroline writes for The Dublin Lady 
 and for The Children's Guide and The Glasgow Northern 
 News and The Lady's Circle. She writes about frying 
 fish and washing sun-bonnets ; and she can't do even 
 that grammatically. For mercy's sake, what do you 
 think she's going to do on The Tetter of Tales ? " 
 
 " Well, I didn't mean she was to write for it itself," 
 Michael said, foiled, " though I don't see how you 
 can know she's incapable of it. ... You always 
 believe nothing's going to turn out right. What's 
 the sense of going on that way ? Uncle Claud knows 
 other magazine people : he could get her a good 
 position on a London paper any day he likes, or as 
 secretary to somebody." 
 
 " She has the presence of an old china- woman," 
 Racie murmured. He quailed before Michael's look 
 of horror and took refuge in a little qualifying laugh. 
 
 " These generalisations are always vulgar," Michael 
 said. ..." And idiotic. China-women are like any 
 other women. . . . China-women . . ." 
 
 " I didn't know you held a brief for china- women," 
 Racie said. " Cheap, I suppose ? " 
 
 " Fearfully cheap," Michael said. " What have her 
 age and appearance to do with it ? It's low, that sort 
 of thing it's abominable. . . . The one question is : 
 ' Can she write ? ' " 
 
 " But she can't ! " Racie cried, goaded into anima- 
 tion. " Haven't I been telling you she can't ? " He
 
 126 THE ROSE-COLOURED ROOM 
 
 shut his eyes and monotoned : " ' This dress would be 
 charming in powder blue voile, but, between you and 
 I, I incline to its expression in one of the modish 
 ratines.' . . . ' Bring to the boil and while boiling 
 add the duck's foot, and other ingredients.' . . . 
 That's the sort of thing she's been doing for half a 
 century." 
 
 Michael was laughing. Racie's irresponsible wit 
 always amused him. 
 
 " Well, I don't care," he said. " Uncle Claud knows 
 all sorts of Press people : he can find her something 
 to do in her own line. Not that I believe that it's 
 such a poor line as you say. I don't believe an 
 educated lady would write that sort of stuff." 
 
 " Educated lady ? " Racie exclaimed. " Educated 
 people have to write what they're paid for," he 
 muttered, retreating before the anger in Michael's face. 
 
 " I'll go up to Glasgow with you to-morrow if you'll 
 have me," Michael said repressively. " I told Mrs. 
 Trathbye I would call any day that Miss Caroline 
 would like an interview. . . . Mrs. Trathbye very 
 kindly asks me to go to-morrow and have tea with 
 them." 
 
 " Oh, Lord," Racie ejaculated. " She has you on 
 toast." 
 
 Michael rose with an affectation of calmness and 
 languor : he stood, brushing his clothes with a hand 
 that trembled a little, and gazing out at the misty sea 
 hardly defined from the misty sky. Farther along 
 the shore there was a point of rocks, sculped sandstone 
 of soft hues of red and rose-colour ; and in one of the 
 curves of this point two boats lay a-dream in a little 
 bay of dim grey-blueness. 
 
 ** I'irgo for a row," Michael said and left his friend.
 
 THE HEDGE OF THORNS 127 
 
 Racie, smoking, watched the boat cleaving the soft 
 shimmering of the sea. The cluck of the oars in the 
 rowlocks came in a swift rhythm, then suddenly 
 stopped. Michael, as his habit was, had shipped the 
 oars and was lying in the bottom of the boat. One of 
 his white-shod feet showed shadowily above the edge 
 of the boat, rising and sinking with the slow pulse of 
 the great drowsy sea. . . . Racie irritably shifted his 
 position, screwing up his eyebrows, uttering a " 'Mf! " 
 eloquent of a forced tolerance of an absurd standard. 
 
 He said to himself that, as a rule, he did not attempt 
 to dissuade Michael Quentin from any folly contem- 
 plated. But this was a bit different. . . . Yes : it 
 was a bit different. Michael, as an active agent of 
 his own crazes, possibly got little harm : indeed, he 
 worked off blinding bedazzling vapours ; and emerged 
 from each of his failures with at least a faint possibility 
 that he would never make a fool of himself in that special 
 way again. But in this affair, Michael was passive 
 in the hands of the Trathbyes. The thing seemed very 
 clear to Racie. Only a human being with an income 
 like Michael's could remain blind to the fact that 
 people would stick at nothing to get money. Racie 
 had inhaled the idea that a woman always schemes to 
 get her daughters married : he would not have said 
 this in words, he had not formally thought it, and 
 he had never before seen, nor looked for, an example 
 of it in life : yet it was there, a vaguely termed, un- 
 questioned dogma. Its corollary was that a son-in- 
 law with money was hailed by the match-making 
 mother especially by the poor match-making mother 
 especially by the widowed poor match-making 
 mother. . . . 
 
 Cunning creatures these widows ! Racie's news of
 
 128 THE ROSE-COLOURED ROOM 
 
 the Trathbyes had confirmed him in his view of them. 
 He had a little disgust against cant about Irish open- 
 ness of heart, Irish simplicity and improvidence. He 
 had heard much of that sort of talk in the Eire Club 
 and at the Mission Rooms, and knew how it was used 
 to flatter, to move, to bedazzle and exploit. That 
 did not matter much : Michael was already chilled 
 by the meetings of the Eire Club and (Racie had 
 hoped) would let the thing shiver to pieces soon. The 
 sooner the better i (he had said) with that idiotic 
 young Cowie constantly on his feet, and with old 
 Patullo curiously off-hand and evasive about the 
 amount of the subscriptions. . . . But now Racie 
 foreboded a folly that might be more enduring and 
 more destructive than the loss of a few pounds and 
 the waste of a few evenings in petty annoyances. 
 
 The thing was very clear to him. Mrs. Trathbye 
 (being a poor widow and a mother) was inevitably a 
 match-maker ; and she was more of a match-maker 
 than the average widowed mother of small income. 
 She had come some years ago, it is true, but still she 
 had come from the south or west of Ireland ; and 
 she belonged, by birth and by marriage, to good 
 hunting, hard-riding, and more or less hard-drinking 
 families. Racie had heard people speak of Mrs. 
 Trathbye as " a perfect lady." He knew what that 
 meant. . . . She had certain graces of manner, 
 possibly of appearance, the concomitants of con- 
 servatism, of a Victorian prudishness and helplessness. 
 Irishmen of the " good family " country type were 
 always at least a century behind the rest of Britain ; 
 and they kept their womenkind in an obscurantism 
 more deep than their own. The word " womenkind " 
 in its mixture of a sort of tender skittishness with
 
 THE HEDGE OF THORNS 129 
 
 mere animalism was in itself eloquent of the attitude 
 of these people. " Womenkind " at home were 
 contented to wheedle for money for dresses and jewels, 
 to light the cigars of their husbands and fathers and 
 brothers. " Womenkind " thrust into the world were 
 frightened, ignorant, desperate creatures : their 
 struggle for matrimony was fierce because marriage 
 was the one career open to them, their single means of 
 livelihood, their sole importance, then* only triumph. 
 
 Mrs. Trathbye (and possibly the daughters) were 
 womenkind. Racie surmised it. They knew that 
 Michael Quentin was rich. It would require one 
 meeting, or at most two, to show them that he was 
 a fool. There was no guile in him : he would walk, 
 with those staring, unseeing eyes of his, into the trap. 
 After he was caught, he would deny that there had 
 been any trap laid. When it was too late, the people 
 might let the mask drop and their ugly duplicity glare 
 out. Then Michael would cry out, in his perennial 
 rage and astonishment. . . . But this time escape 
 would not be possible. 
 
 The worst of it was (Racie must admit to himself) 
 that the people's state was not altogether one of crude, 
 flagrant beggary. They had something to offer that 
 might tempt a man far less of a fool than Michael was, 
 with senses far less easily quickened, with a love of 
 beauty much less devout. Yes, they had something 
 hang them ! The girl was beautiful. Racie had 
 struggled against the admission : it came now in the 
 presence of the undeniable unclaiming beauty of 
 Nature. She was akin to that : she bore the test of it 
 as a splendid line of poetry rings and vaunts in the 
 brain unshattered by the voices of streams and trees. 
 Her beauty rang true : there was in it something 
 
 i
 
 130 THE ROSE-COLOURED ROOM 
 
 primaeval, a wonder of freshness, a glory of power, as 
 there was in the dawn or in the opening of a rose. . . . 
 It was merely bodily. What signs had she given 
 of a rare spirit, a warm heart, an alert brain ? But 
 Michael, having his senses appealed to, had let his 
 imagination run riot in a very wilderness of illusions. 
 Hang her ! Hang them all ! There was no doubt that 
 the people knew how beautiful she was and were 
 basing their hopes on her. Racie knew for was not 
 the air full of tales of match-making mothers fostering 
 their girls' good looks, tending their tresses and com- 
 plexions, insisting on regulations in rest and diet ? 
 Once at the Eire Club he had heard Miss Morland quiz 
 Miss Trathbye on having to go early to bed " like a 
 good little girl." There came a disquieting picture of 
 Drusilla's face flushing at the impertinence of the 
 deepening and extending of the rose-colour in her 
 cheeks, of the distressed soft eyes, the parted lips, so 
 mournful and innocent. Confound her ! Now Racie 
 felt an exasperation that might have astonished him 
 had he realised its energy. Michael Quentin was badly 
 armoured for resisting the attacks of a wily, prudish, 
 mercenary widow : but this weapon of beauty, placed 
 in her hands, was in itself so dangerous to him that its 
 use hardly needed the technique acquired by poverty, 
 obscurantism, and widowhood. . . . Racie still with 
 that dogmatic vagueness of popular opinion per- 
 ceived that the other members of the family, physically 
 and socially, deliberately sacrificed themselves to the 
 preservation and advertisement of this girl's attrac- 
 tions. It was, no doubt, a matter tacitly understood 
 rather than spoken of; but as much of a business 
 venture as the action of a poor family who sent their 
 clever boy to a university, hoping for general benefits
 
 THE HEDGE OF THORNS 131 
 
 from his future prosperity. . . . The girl, though the 
 eldest, did not go out to work as her sisters did. 
 There was, of course, the probability that her good 
 looks made it difficult for her mother's Victorian 
 ideas would find offences in the merest familiarities, 
 good-natured and admiring. The girl could hardly 
 Racie reluctantly acknowledged it could hardly 
 walk about town alone without exciting stares from 
 young, old, and middle-aged fools. Still, the family 
 was poor : other poor girls, with fair faces and fine 
 figures, had to go to business why not this one ? 
 It was unlikely that she was kept at home to assist 
 in the house. What else had the widow to do ? 
 What was the aunt there for with her scanty monthly 
 columns ? Racie did not believe that the girl worked 
 in the house : her hands were white : he imagined 
 her breakfasting in bed, being waited upon and petted 
 like the spoiled beauty in a novel. Beauties were 
 always spoiled : the world was soft and silly to them : 
 the sun fell around them tenderly, and the wind blew 
 upon them only to set free lovely little twists and curls 
 of their hair. 
 
 Racie, looking out to the dim drowsing sea where 
 the phantom-like white foot rose and fell with the 
 boat, puffed a loud breath that was akin to a sigh. 
 It would be an exaggeration to say that he took a vow 
 to protect Michael with his money and his stupidity, 
 against the Trathbyes' impecunious scheming : but 
 it is certain that Racie's feelings came near to crystal- 
 lising into such a resolve. He said to himself, rather 
 excitedly, that he must affect to be completely in- 
 different. He was not going to contradict Michael 
 into stubbornness by speaking against the Trathbyes : 
 the best plan was to reduce them to insignificance.
 
 132 THE ROSE-COLOURED ROOM 
 
 He had really nothing to say against the people : 
 they were, no doubt, justified from their own point 
 of view. To offer the girl's beauty was a perfectly 
 fair thing to do 
 
 Not to Michael Quentin. None of the treatments 
 that were applicable to other men were effective in 
 his case. It was not fair even to leave him alone to 
 make a fool of himself. He was too divinely foolish. 
 
 Michael, on his back in the bottom of the boat, was 
 gazing up at the sleepy sky. Behind the blue-grey 
 veil something struggled and strove, something bright 
 and eternal waited. It was glorious to lie there and 
 see the faint suffusion of light in the mist. Michael 
 had often thought, watching for dawn, that he would 
 not lose a moment of the time of expectancy when 
 Night was still reluctant to yield to Day : he knew so 
 well the wonder that was coming : it was enchantment 
 to wait, lulled into inertia by the very hope and 
 rapture. 
 
 What need was there for men to rush onward in the 
 search for God ? God came. Why cut short the 
 time of hoping and praying and dreaming, the waiting 
 for His footstep and the rustle of His garment ? 
 
 What need was there to wrong Love by haste ? 
 Love was a jealous God. Let him have his full meed 
 of expectation, of trust, of prayers and fears and hopes. 
 Let him have sufferings, too, to lay at her feet, tears, 
 dumb dreads and despairs, reverences in which a man 
 did not ask to lift the veil but was content to kneel, 
 loving the brightness that suffused it. ... Oh, the 
 baseness, the stupidity of not rejoicing in Love's 
 probation, in not glorying in Love's blind faith in 
 that other soul hidden behind its veil ! . . . Love 
 would come Love would come.
 
 THE HEDGE OF THORNS 188 
 
 II 
 
 Brasilia's feeling, when she heard that Michael 
 Quentin was coming to tea, was an overpowering one 
 of dismay. She had no energy to spare for mere 
 anger or annoyance : she felt helpless, as in the 
 presence of a catastrophe. 
 
 She had known, of course, that her mother had 
 overheard all of Patullo's offer. Even had this not 
 been so, Brasilia had an honesty which had nothing 
 to do with principle, which was easily conquered by 
 her timidity, but took little account of possible 
 dangers. She would have told her mother about 
 Patullo's offer, foreseeing that it might lead to humilia- 
 ting dealings with Michael Quentin : but in her sur- 
 mises, the worst that could have come of it would 
 have been the submission of one of Aunt Caroline's 
 columns and an absurd letter to the editor of The 
 Teller of Tales ; then disappointment. The Trathbyes 
 never expected anything else. 
 
 But on Aunt Caroline's return from the garden- 
 party, Mrs. Trathbye had risen from her sick-bed and 
 come into the kitchen. Clothed in a dressing-gown of 
 a greyish blue colour, and with a crimson Shetland 
 wool shawl swathed about her head and face, she 
 moved with a characteristic grace and stateliness ; 
 taking the tray of cups and saucers from Brasilia's 
 hands and herself laying the table ; replacing the 
 brown loaf by a white one ; taking away the spoons 
 and scornfully polishing them ; practising a score of 
 other base little irritations, vulgar little self-asser- 
 tions. Mrs. Trathbye's cheeks were hot and her eyes 
 glistened : she was ostentatiously friendly to 
 Aunt Caroline ; and she talked eagerly of Patullo's
 
 134 THE ROSE-COLOURED ROOM 
 
 suggestions striving, it seemed to Drusilla, to lose 
 sight of the scene in the hall. Drusilla, with the rings 
 left by the weeping round her eyes, was piteous, too 
 miserable to interfere in the plans of the two women. 
 Essie, coming in laughing, with a mischievous mouth, 
 seemed delightfully natural and wholesome, and did 
 much to lay the horror that had looked from their 
 mother's eyes. 
 
 A day later Drusilla had noticed, on the hall table, 
 a letter addressed in her aunt's handwriting to Michael 
 Quentin. Aunt Caroline's writing, pale and spidery, 
 was in itself an offence. A fury urged Drusilla to tear 
 the letter, to burn it, to lie about it : any means of 
 saving her place in Michael's opinion seemed justifi- 
 able. But the letter continued to lie hi a pale 
 inviolability and later was carried to the post. 
 Michael's reply was discussed by Mrs. Trathbye and 
 Aunt Caroline, by Essie and Kathleen. They would 
 have told Drusilla everything if she had asked, but 
 she would ask nothing. She saw that another letter 
 was despatched, and wondered, in a dreadful sore 
 shame, what they were doing. It was mean of them 
 to be making use of her friends at whom they had 
 sneered in hostility : it was insolent : it was cruel. 
 They ought to have known more about her feelings 
 towards Michael than to be bruising her heart in this 
 way. Her mother ought to have understood. 
 
 Mrs. Trathbye laughed with pleasure when she 
 received Michael's acceptance of her invitation. She 
 was hospitable and her chances of playing the hostess 
 were rare. 
 
 " Girls, he's coming to tea on Friday." 
 
 " Well, I hope you'll be able to get something for 
 tea," Essie said, quizzing her mother. " / can't give
 
 THE HEDGE OF THORNS 185 
 
 you any more money." She earned the largest salary 
 and was beginning to be critical of the management 
 of the house. She had been for the last three months 
 in a big office, where there were many other girls, 
 and the influence of their merriment and their talk 
 about clothes was beginning to show in Essie. Her 
 work was of increased importance, satisfying in some 
 measure her self-esteem. She was blither, gentler, 
 less morbidly domineering. Now and then a certain 
 sympathy with Drusilla peeped forth, a disposition, 
 faint and erratic, to side with her sister against the 
 insane contradictions and censures of Aunt Caroline 
 and Mrs. Trathbye. . . . Essie's hair, of a lighter 
 brown than Kathleen's, was done carefully rather than 
 becomingly, and she was beginning to dress well. 
 Kathleen, in a sleepy office with one old man in it, 
 wore a clumsy blouse and skirt and collars with holes 
 in them. 
 
 " Ah, I'm not asking you for money ! " Mrs. 
 Trathbye said, reproachful. " I'm not going to 
 make any pretence of having anything more than 
 usual." 
 
 " Of course not," Essie said, sarcastic. She glanced 
 over the table on which there were two platefuls of 
 food, one of bread, the other of farthing biscuits. 
 The Trathbyes, very clean in their habits, were 
 obliged to economise in the matter of table-linen. 
 The cloth was of a greyish tinge with tea-stains here 
 and there. 
 
 " I'll be responsible for the tea," Aunt Caroline said, 
 very dignified. " It's me he's coming to see." 
 
 Mrs. Trathbye bubbled with laughter. 
 
 "Is he good-looking ? " she asked Drusilla. " He 
 might take a fancy to your aunt."
 
 136 THE ROSE-COLOURED ROOM 
 
 " Dillie's got idiotic ideas about people's looks," 
 Kathleen growled. 
 
 " You needn't be so beastly," Essie said. Life in 
 her big office was teaching her the charms of badinage : 
 she was becoming conscious that at home the man 
 question was treated too gravely and bitterly. Her 
 mother even, with her freakish moods of jesting, 
 would joke only about cases which were impossible. 
 
 " Why shouldn't he take a fancy to one of us ? " 
 Essie said. " To Dillie or me ? " 
 
 Mrs. Trathbye glanced quickly from Kathleen to 
 Brasilia : the laughter faded from her face. " Well 
 . . . there's your chance, Kathleen," she said. Her 
 voice was artificial, and Kathleen rose in resentment. 
 The girl, plain and clumsy in her juvenile dress, felt 
 in a half-comprehending way that it was to her lack 
 of charms that she owed her mother's favouritism. 
 
 At night Drusilla lay beside Essie and thought. It 
 was Tuesday and Michael was to come on Friday. 
 She must find some means of preventing it : she 
 regretted that she had not destroyed Aunt Caroline's 
 first letter : she thought feverishly of writing a note 
 to Michael cancelling the invitation ; of sending him 
 a telegram with news of an illness in the house. No : 
 that would be found out. . . . She must do something. 
 She imagined the scene of the tea-party ; the table 
 laden with the good china, and the silver, the " tea- 
 bread " and cake, the bread and butter, which on 
 important occasions Kathleen was always asked to 
 cut, which she cut so thickly and raggedly ; the 
 hot fire, Mrs. Trathbye's ideal of evening comfort in 
 summer as in winter ; the shining of Essie's face, 
 the deepening crimson of Kathleen's. She imagined 
 Aunt Caroline, fussing, interrupting, contradicting,
 
 THE HEDGE OF THORNS 137 
 
 pressing Michael to eat ; the clearing of the table 
 with everybody in the relief of motion getting into 
 everybody's else's way ; Mrs. Trathbye going to the 
 piano and singing duets with Kathleen, thrusting 
 sulky cynical Kathleen on the visitor's notice. . . . 
 
 It was not bearable. The singular thing was that 
 up till now Drusilla had believed that her family, 
 deliberately social, must make a rather pleasant 
 impression. She had even pictured an evening with 
 Alick Cowie as a guest, charmed by her mother. The 
 good china was pretty and old, and she had not before 
 felt that there was anything shameful in her mother's 
 pride in it. The silver, glittering beyond a bunch of 
 flowers, the stiff, shining folds of the " good " table- 
 cloth, the unusual abundance of food, were pleasant 
 to her senses. If you got a seat at the far side of the 
 table the fire was not intolerable. Mrs. Trathbye 
 sang prettily : it did not matter very much about 
 Kathleen, nor about Essie's piece, " Betsy and I are 
 out," which she recited. People were accustomed to 
 girls doing things badly. ... It did not matter very 
 much about Aunt Caroline so long as she was in a 
 fairly good temper and kept out of the room most of 
 the time. She had a habit of staying in the kitchen 
 so that visitors might think that she was the main- 
 spring of the household. Poor Aunt Caroline ! With 
 Cowie there as a guest, Drusilla would have smiled 
 at her oddities. 
 
 But what was good enough for Cowie, what would 
 have been taken for granted by him, no, what would 
 have pleased and impressed him, seemed ridiculously 
 vile and incongruous in relation to Michael Quentin. 
 Drusilla thought of Michael's cultured voice, of his 
 hands, his serious eyes, of the books that he read, the
 
 138 THE ROSE-COLOURED ROOM 
 
 things of which he spoke. Oh, it was cruel to disgrace 
 her before Michael Quentin ! In her helplessness she 
 began to sob, and Essie, turning impatiently by her 
 side, asked : 
 
 " What's wrong ? Are you dreaming ? " 
 
 " Yes it was something like a bad dream anyway," 
 Drusilla replied with a feverish laugh. 
 
 " Well, I wish to goodness you'd be quiet and 
 let me sleep. Every one can't lie in bed in the 
 morning. ..." 
 
 " There it is again," Drusilla thought with a kind 
 of amusement. For it was strange how unreal her 
 thoughts on the Wage-earning Problem seemed to her 
 now. She would not have tolerated platitudes about 
 a sound financial basis or her duty to her family. 
 Her interests clashed fiercely with theirs in this 
 matter. Let them go down with their fustian notions ! 
 She knew that Michael and she were right, dwellers 
 on the plane of realities, where beauty and refine- 
 ment and the truths of Life and Death that men 
 call Poetry were appraised at their true value. She 
 said to herself savagely that she had a right to be 
 ashamed, even of her mother. . . . She found herself 
 praying, childishly asking God to keep Michael from 
 coming. 
 
 It seemed like a partial answer to her prayer when 
 Aunt Caroline, the most sore of her disgraces, had a 
 bad cold on Thursday. On Friday she was so much 
 worse that she must be put to bed in Mrs. Trathbye's 
 room. Mrs. Trathbye, not sorry, seized on the 
 laundried cloth, on the bags of food that poor Caroline 
 had bought, on the silver that she had polished. 
 There was elaborate cleaning of the house, the setting 
 of a fire in the sitting-room, the donning of dresses.
 
 THE HEDGE OF THORNS 139 
 
 The gas-lamp in the hall was lighted and the flame 
 kept low till Michael rang. 
 
 Mrs. Trathbye, with a slish ! of skirts, rushed to the 
 door. Drusilla had risen and sat down in annoyance : 
 she heard her mother's social tones of voice, gracious, 
 gentle, with a kind of old-world courtesy. The 
 sounds fell soothingly, and she smiled as she remem- 
 bered her own childish saying that her mother speak- 
 ing to a visitor always made her think of country- 
 houses with peacocks and terraces. She looked into 
 the mirror in the overmantel and saw her broad 
 shoulders in her best white muslin blouse, the pink 
 bow at her throat, the loveliness of her face and head. 
 She fluttered a glance over the pretty tea-table, the 
 lamp-lit and shadowed artful cosiness of the room, 
 the figures of Essie and Kathleen, white-bloused and 
 with twinkling beaded slippers. 
 
 Michael came in and she offered him her hand 
 timidly. Mrs. Trathbye talked, for she had never 
 encouraged the girls to be more than monosyllabic 
 to visitors. Aunt Caroline's cold was discussed ; 
 then her journalism. Mrs. Trathbye thanked Michael, 
 very warmly, for his kindness ; and Michael, colouring 
 charmingly, said : 
 
 " Oh, please ..." 
 
 Patullo's idea that Drusilla should obtain journal- 
 istic work had up till now been ignored. It was 
 therefore with a blush of surprise that she heard her 
 mother say, laughingly : 
 
 " Mr. Patullo was suggesting that Dillie should try 
 something of the kind : but I'm afraid it needs more 
 perseverance than she has. She hasn't the patience 
 to stick long to any one thing." 
 
 Michael's eyes met Drusilla's and he smiled ; and
 
 140 THE ROSE-COLOURED ROOM 
 
 suddenly, with happy eyes, she was responding to the 
 smile, resting in it as in the tenderness of sunshine. 
 Her rage at her mother's artificial good-nature, at the 
 false impression deliberately given, fell down into 
 nothingness as rapidly as it had flickered up : she 
 did not want to explain to Michael for she felt 
 that they were understanding each other about deep 
 things real things, the only things that had 
 power. 
 
 At tea, Mrs. Trathbye asked Michael about his Irish 
 blood, and, sighing, told him about Croaghnaihill and 
 about poor John telling him much that was new to 
 him and, indeed, to the girls themselves. Michael, 
 listening, gazing into Mrs. Trathbye's face, was trying 
 to reconstruct it in its bloom of firm flesh and un- 
 withered skin. Certainly she resembled Drusilla, he 
 had thought at first sight : but the likeness wavered, 
 vanished, reappeared till, at the end of the evening, 
 he called himself an idiot for having imagined that it 
 existed. Yet in his mental pictures of Mrs. Trathbye 
 in Ireland he painted her rather like Drusilla a fair- 
 haired Drusilla, less tall, less radiant. . . . The other 
 girls were altogether unlike her : they must inherit 
 from their father. 
 
 Mrs. Trathbye refused Drusilla's help to clear away 
 the tea-things. " Kathleen's my right hand," Mrs. 
 Trathbye said to Michael ; and Kathleen, in her 
 thick short skirt with her hanging plait and her 
 curious air of elderliness, went stolidly in and out 
 with the tray. Drusilla, ashamed of her imputed 
 uselessness, shot a glance at Michael ; and again she 
 found him looking at her with visionary eyes and she 
 rested in the look with a feeling that she was under- 
 stood and comforted, that the reproach was taken
 
 THE HEDGE OF THORNS 141 
 
 away from her, that she was being lifted up into a 
 place of freedom and truthful seeing. Nothing else 
 mattered. Her shames and terrors of the last few 
 days and nights had shrivelled like vapours in the 
 sunlight. 
 
 Mrs. Trathbye played and sang. She explained to 
 Michael, with motherly indulgent laughter, that 
 Drusilla had no ear and that a number of music- 
 lessons had been wasted upon her. It was not worth 
 while saying " When ? " in anger at this lie, which 
 her mother half believed. Drusilla sat contentedly 
 while her mother and Kathleen sang and Essie said her 
 " piece." Michael asked her no questions about her 
 accomplishments : he hardly spoke to her : when he 
 stood up to go the words that had passed between 
 them were no more than could have been remem- 
 bered by a casual listener. . . . Yet Drusilla felt very 
 happy. 
 
 " Turn down that gas ! " Mrs. Trathbye said, as the 
 hall-door closed : the girls paid no attention, for they 
 had run to the window to see Michael emerge from the 
 close. Essie, smiling, denned in the lighted window, 
 waved to him as he looked up. Kathleen, sunned 
 out of her sulkiness by her mother's advertise- 
 ments, by the singing of her song, and especially 
 by an evening spent in the company of a young 
 man, waved too, hot-faced and giggling. Drusilla 
 felt that they were guilty of a profanity : she sud- 
 denly went from the window and put out the lamp- 
 light. 
 
 " Ah, don't be doing a thing like that and me 
 just going to the cupboard," Mrs. Trathbye said 
 plaintively at the door. " Jealous just because your 
 sisters are getting more attention than you are it
 
 142 THE ROSE-COLOURED ROOM 
 
 isn't nice. . . . Come away and help me with the tea- 
 things." 
 
 Drusilla went ; glad that her mother had asked 
 her, happy, too blissfully, unreasonably confident to 
 resent the effrontery of the obviously conscious mis- 
 representation. 
 
 " It's all very well to be having all these things 
 to-night," Mrs. Trathbye said blithely in the kitchen, 
 as Essie began to eat a bun. " We'll suffer for it at 
 the end of the week." She folded the left-over food 
 in a napkin. ..." Isn't it an extraordinary thing 
 that Mr. Patullo hasn't given me back my two 
 shillings ? " 
 
 " Perhaps he means to keep it," Drusilla said, laugh- 
 ing. It did not occur to Mrs. Trathbye that the thing 
 was possible. Mr. Patullo was a person to be taken 
 seriously ; a man, an old gentleman with a courtly 
 bow and an immense circle of friends. His rather 
 evident poverty did not influence Mrs. Trathbye and 
 Aunt Caroline, in whose minds respectability and 
 shabbiness were not dissociated. The girls especi- 
 ally Essie, who was successful in business had 
 inhaled something of the spirit of the city : they 
 turned instinctively from the claim made by Patullo's 
 bent, seedy body and pitiable movements. 
 
 " Ah, he'll remember it, poor man," Mrs. Trathbye 
 said kindly. Neither she nor Aunt Caroline would 
 have treated a stranger with the least indelicacy in 
 such a matter : yet they obstreperously reminded 
 each other of debts of a few pence. 
 
 Mrs. Trathbye, carefully wiping the china, which 
 she had brought with her from Ireland, looked up at 
 her daughter in a strange, tentative, half-afraid way. 
 
 " I was rather disappointed in Mr. Quentin,"
 
 THE HEDGE OF THORNS 143 
 
 Mrs. Trathbye said. " He has an impediment 
 you didn't tell us that, Dillie. He isn't at all good- 
 looking ? " 
 
 It was a question, but failed to be provocative. 
 Drusilla looked with happy confident eyes into her 
 mother's : her speech was quite calm, quite sincere. 
 
 " He looks very nice sometimes," she said. 
 
 Mrs. Trathbye's eyes were averted. " Your aunt 
 will have to stay in my room to-night," she said, " so 
 Kathleen and I must make up a bed in the parlour." 
 
 Michael, walking in his rapid yet dreaming way, was 
 thinking of the stuff that Racie had hinted about the 
 Trathbyes. They were charming, refined women, 
 witty and playful to each other. Their voices and 
 laughter, full of western music, had delighted him. 
 Mrs. Trathbye's accent was almost purely Irish : she 
 was evidently a creature curiously unadaptable, 
 idyllically simple in her point of view. The girls' 
 speech had been modified by their early removal to 
 Glasgow : but their vocabulary kept many Irish words 
 and their soft voices slid naturally into the rise and 
 fall that Michael performed by conscious practice. . . . 
 They did not seem to be very poor at all : the house 
 was very pretty, he thought, clean and dainty : the 
 china was beautiful, and he remembered a glow and 
 glitter as of gold and silver and quantities of flowers. 
 No detail was very clear in his memory, but there was 
 an abiding sense of sweet femininity, of the absence 
 of the masculine side of life with its grosser needs. 
 How kind they had been to him ! It was all so little, 
 their life, so pure and gentle, so quaint in its preju- 
 dices and timidities. It had made him very happy 
 to see Drusilla at home. She had showed him her
 
 144 THE ROSE-COLOURED ROOM 
 
 books and once or twice their hands had touched. 
 She had spoken of going to Mass and this supposed 
 revelation of her church had made her seem more 
 than ever the incarnation of the spirit of Ireland. 
 She came to him as it were to bring him back to his 
 own country, the lost spiritual home of which the 
 green Ireland of earth was only the symbol. " Rosa- 
 leen," Michael said to himself, " Rosaleen . . ." 
 Racie was not there to remind him that Rosaleen was 
 dark, and Michael went on : 
 
 " / could scale the blue air : 
 I could plough the high hills. 
 Oh, I could kneel all night in prayer 
 To heal your many ills ..." 
 
 Many ills ? Somehow he thought suddenly of that 
 note of expectancy in her voice. 
 
 Expectancy of what ? Not, surely, of deliverance 
 from woes, but only of the untried life to come, of the 
 sure slow steps of Love ; only a waiting without 
 wistfulness. For the barriers about this princess 
 were soft and sweet, all of roses. 
 
 Michael saw two figures on the pavement a little 
 distance in front of him the figure of a boy scurrying 
 along and the figure of a man, half dragged by him, 
 staggering in his wake. The movement suggested 
 something different from drunkenness. Michael, 
 hastening up to him, saw old Patullo. 
 
 Patullo was lurching, his knees bent : he stared 
 heavily at Michael and his voice came, quiet, with a 
 dreadful kind of patience. 
 
 " I've had bad news, Mr. Quentin," Patullo said.
 
 THE HEDGE OF THORNS 145 
 
 III 
 
 Not far from the Eire Club Mission Rooms there was 
 a poor respectable street called Seymour Road, lined 
 for some distance with tenements of shops and houses, 
 then with hoardings and yards and an aged square 
 house or two set in a grass-plot among trees. Sey- 
 mour Road ended at the wall of White-meadow 
 Cemetery an old grey wall on which lichens grew 
 and over which the tips of white obelisks showed. 
 
 Old Patullo, with Michael and the breathless boy, 
 stopped at the first of the square houses a black 
 block divided now into half a dozen little dwellings. 
 A street lamp opposite showed the iron railings and 
 gate, the withering trees and the long dirty grass. A 
 clothes-line was stretched between the railings and 
 one of the trees, and pale garments wavered in the 
 darkness. 
 
 There was a movement close beside them and a 
 woman in a heavy shawl came up to Patullo. 
 
 " He found yez all right then ? " she said. " He's 
 a good boy." 
 
 Michael recognised her deep, tender voice : it was 
 Mrs. Quinn, who came to the meetings at the club 
 rooms, bringing the little boy, Miss Morland's 
 favourite. 
 
 " I couldn't get a clear account from him," Patullo 
 said in a curious, pleading, bullying way. " What is 
 it ? How's he now ? " 
 
 " Ah, God help you the wee cratur's gone," Mrs. 
 Quinn said. " God help you, Mr. Patullo." 
 
 They went round the house by a narrow path, damp 
 and smelling of flower-pots, and mounted a flight of 
 stairs at the back. A wash of light came from a 
 
 K
 
 146 THE ROSE-COLOURED ROOM 
 
 muslin- curtained window, and Michael looked at Mrs. 
 Quinn's face as he always did when she came to the 
 club-rooms. It was a face of noble lines, pure-browed, 
 with a wearied pallor : the dark grey eyes were 
 singularly honest and gentle. She was speaking to 
 the boy, commending him for his quickness. 
 
 " Run away now like a good boy, and God bless 
 you." 
 
 The room they entered was full of clothes coats, 
 dresses, and cloaks hanging from the walls, hats and 
 boots stacked on shelves. Michael remembered that 
 Mrs. Quinn, an industrious and fairly well-to-do 
 woman, was in the old-clothes trade. He looked 
 round, wondering who had worn those garments, what 
 pretty girls had smiled from under the crushed, dusty 
 hats or snuggled into the wraps. There was one hat 
 somewhat like the brown one that Drusilla had worn. 
 
 " Where ? . . . " Michael heard Patullo say. 
 
 " He's beyant in the bedroom, Mr. Patullo. But 
 come into the kitchen first. Ah then, come." There 
 was none of the common ghoulish delight in details of 
 death and sickness : Mrs. Quinn silently led Patullo 
 to a chair in the sparkling little kitchen, crammed 
 with furniture. There was a shelf full of children's 
 books, a little chair in a corner, a rocking-horse. 
 Patullo, staring at them all, sat down. Mrs. Quinn 
 moved a hissing kettle to the middle of the hot 
 glittering range ; then, looking at Michael and com- 
 pressing her lips, went out into the passage. Michael 
 stood beside her, passive, as if in a dream, staring at 
 the shut door of the bedroom. 
 
 " Ye'd like to . . . ? " Mrs. Quinn said, and opened 
 it. Michael saw another little room, stuffed with 
 furniture, with white woolly rugs on the carpeted
 
 THE HEDGE OF THORNS 147 
 
 floor, with pink and blue vases on the chimney-piece, 
 with a child's cot beside the aggressive brass bedstead. 
 The cot was empty and the body of the little boy, 
 brown-haired and smiling, was laid on the bed and 
 covered with a thick white quilt. 
 
 " I knew you were fond of the wee cratur," Mrs. 
 Quinn said, as if to justify her action in showing the 
 dead boy. 
 
 The words and the moving sight roused Michael. 
 He began to reason to link Patullo's overwhelm- 
 ment with the child's death. Patullo must have 
 known the child got to care about him. . . . How ? 
 Patullo had never to his knowledge come to the 
 Mission Rooms. 
 
 " An' the pleasure he tuk in your stories an' your 
 singin' and dancin'. . . . Ah, goodness gracious ! " 
 Mrs. Quinn said. " It will be quare an sorry Miss 
 Morland will be." 
 
 Miss Morland ? Michael tried to understand what 
 she had to do with it. He remembered that it was 
 Patullo who had first recommended Miss Morland, 
 that Miss Morland was an old friend of Patullo, 
 had been coached by him before her teaching days. 
 . . . The thing did not seem more clear. 
 
 * ' H-how did the little boy die ? ' ' Michael stammered . 
 
 " It was pewnoma, Mr. Quentin. He got worse, an' 
 us thinking it was only a cold. I'd sent word to 
 Miss Morland, but she was away in London on some 
 Votes for Women business. She does a lot of that : 
 she's quare and clever. . . . Come into the kitchen, 
 Mr. Quentin, and have a cup of tea." 
 
 " N-no, thank you," Michael answered, suddenly 
 horribly oppressed. " I'll wait outside will you tell 
 him ? "
 
 148 THE ROSE-COLOURED ROOM 
 
 Outside rain had begun to fall : the eaves dripped 
 and the dead leaves on the flags whispered and 
 whistled. Michael walked to the front gate and stared 
 along the shimmering road with its blurred lamp- 
 gleams to where the white ghostly obelisks peeped 
 over the cemetery wall. 
 
 In a surprisingly short time Patullo came behind 
 him. 
 
 " I must apologise for keeping you waiting, Mr. 
 Quentin." 
 
 " Let's walk," Michael said abruptly, to signify that 
 time was not precious to him. He had lost the 
 stupefied feeling produced by the swift transition 
 from his dreams of a Maeterlinck princess among roses 
 to this picture of Seymour Road with its stone-cutter's 
 yards and insanitary houses. The whole thing had 
 seemed unreal, a ghostly vision contrasting with the 
 vivid hues of his dream. But now his heart leaped 
 out to old Patullo : he was all alert in his longing to 
 understand, to help and comfort. He prayed as they 
 trudged along the dreary road in the wind and rain ; 
 and suddenly Patullo spoke : 
 
 " I suppose you've guessed he was my own child, 
 Mr. Quentin." 
 
 A long silence. 
 
 " N-no ! I didn't I didn't know," Michael faltered. 
 
 " He was nearly seven," Patullo said in his cultured 
 voice. " His mother drinks. I took him away from 
 her four years ago, but I couldn't keep him with me 
 
 at my flat. There were my pupils to consider ' 
 
 Patullo's voice faded away with a suggestion of deceit 
 and he glanced up at Michael " They'd have passed 
 remarks. . . . She made horrible scenes I should 
 have been afraid of her coming up and making scenes."
 
 THE HEDGE OF THORNS 149 
 
 " I'm sorry," Michael said, deeply touched by the 
 thing that Patullo had left unsaid. His own drunken- 
 ness, too, was a spectacle that the child must not see. 
 
 "I did my best for him," Patullo said. "Mrs. 
 Quinn's a good woman. She used to come round our 
 way to do business with my wife. She it's a horrible 
 thing to tell, Mr. Quentin, but it's true she used to 
 sell her clothes, and mine, and things in the house, 
 to buy . . . intoxicants . . . when I refused to give 
 her money." 
 
 " How awful," Michael said as Patullo paused 
 appealingly. 
 
 " I hadn't very much money to give, you see, Mr. 
 Quentin," Patullo said, " though I was doing fairly 
 well then. . . . That sort of thing damaged me very 
 much with my pupils." 
 
 " Of course," Michael said. " So it would indeed." 
 
 " You know how you'd feel yourself," Patullo said. 
 " How any young gentleman would feel. And 
 parents don't like sending their sons and daughters 
 to a house where there's anything of that sort. It got 
 to be distinctly unpleasant and disgraceful and at last 
 we were obliged to have separate establishments. . . . 
 I did my best for the child. We " Patullo cleared 
 his throat " moved in a rather narrow circle. I had 
 got rather cut off from my friends since my marriage. 
 ... I have a woman who comes up to * do for ' me 
 in my flat in Lochaber Gardens a most respectable 
 woman ; but she's not the kind of person I could have 
 trusted with the boy. It wouldn't have been a proper 
 life for a child at the most susceptible period of his life 
 when the young idea is just beginning to shoot." 
 Patullo smiled weakly. " I did my best for him. 
 I felt I was bound to remove him from his home
 
 150 THE ROSE-COLOURED ROOM 
 
 influences. He had to attend school with rather 
 uncouth little specimens but, bless me, Mr. Quentin, 
 that's the true democratic spirit." 
 
 " I wish I'd been sent to a poor school," Michael 
 said earnestly. 
 
 " Why, there you are ! " Patullo exclaimed, grati- 
 fied. " I've heard people of the best position express 
 just your opinion, Mr. Quentin people who had me 
 down to their country seats and used to send me 
 motoring and yachting with their sons. . . . He'd 
 picked up one or two queer expressions, but Miss 
 Morland would soon have got him out of that : she 
 had him up often. . . . Mrs. Quinn was fond of him 
 and she's more real refinement than the average nurse 
 or nursery governess." 
 
 Michael made a gesture disavowing the need for 
 apologies. The thing that filled his heart with sur- 
 prise and dismay was the normality of Patullo in his 
 grief. His voice was a little changed : but there was 
 no difference in his manner nor in his face. He 
 shambled along, girt about with a kind of unapproach- 
 ableness by his commonplaceness Patullo the tutor, 
 with a certain pedantic niceness of diction, with 
 humble black coat-tails hanging over his thin legs, 
 with his tobacco-stained forefinger and his alcohol- 
 laden breath. Michael felt baffled by this dreary 
 patience which accepted sorrow and failure as things 
 of course. He fell into a silence which Patullo tried 
 to break by courteous little remarks about the neigh- 
 bourhood, the growth of picture palaces, and the 
 Insurance Bill. His steps began to lag lamentably 
 and Michael feared that they must soon board a car 
 and cast away his chance to speak. 
 
 " Mr. Patullo " he began, frantic.
 
 THE HEDGE OF THORNS 151 
 
 Patullo was very sensitive : he stood still, looking 
 at Michael with eyes nervously emotional. 
 
 " Mr. Patullo, it's awfully difficult for me to speak," 
 Michael said. " I c-can't make people understand. 
 It's funny I think there must be something wrong 
 with my vocabulary." He made a leaping movement 
 towards Patullo, who, about to contradict him, stopped 
 in a startled state. "I'm awfully sorry," Michael 
 said. "It's so kind of you to have told me . . . 
 about things. Will you tell me if I can do anything 
 to help you . . . anything at all ? " 
 
 " You're exceedingly kind, Mr. Quentin," Patullo 
 said, walking on with downcast eyes. 
 
 " Nothing ? . . . It's hard on me then," Michael 
 said. " That's always the way with me : I want to 
 help people : I don't seem able to get doing it. It 
 must be my own fault : I can't have enough of sym- 
 pathy to be able to give them the things they really 
 want. I must be just filling a place and grabbing and 
 getting my good out of other people's pain just all 
 the things I imagine I'm living to condemn.' 
 
 " Mr. Quentin . . . it's not true," Patullo said 
 agitatedly. He turned and began to walk slowly 
 back over the road that they had traversed. " You 
 do yourself less than justice, Mr. Quentin," Patullo 
 said in his formal tones. " Believe me, I have seen 
 a good many young men develop and I may say it 
 without flattery, Mr. Quentin I have never seen one 
 with parts to equal yours or with a disposition better 
 calculated to ... endear him to his fellows." 
 
 " Well, then," Michael said, pleased and blushing, 
 " tell me if I can do anything. . . . Now or at any 
 time ? . . . Anything ? " 
 
 He slipped his arm under Patullo's, tightly clutching
 
 152 THE ROSE-COLOURED ROOM 
 
 the black sleeve. It was piteous that Patullo, at his 
 time of life, should have no overcoat, or at least no one 
 at home to tell him to put on his overcoat. 
 
 It was rather disappointing that Patullo's arm made 
 no response : but Michael kept his hold. They passed 
 a hoarding, a patchwork of colours in the splashes of 
 light from the street lamps : a girl's face, wide- 
 mouthed and huge-eyed, laughed over a heathery 
 landscape and cattle-piece advertising a beef extract. 
 Michael found his mind yielding to the idea of this 
 poster's suggestion of the glories of earth and sky and 
 living creatures used by each man for the extraction 
 of his own little commodity. . . . They saw, where 
 the hoarding ended, a stone-cutter's yard with pale 
 glistening angular shapes of granite and marble ; and 
 far off similar pale shapes, shadowed in the night, 
 were peeping over the cemetery wall. 
 
 " I haven't money to bury him decently," Patullo 
 said hoarsely, in a low voice that was shocked and 
 ashamed. 
 
 " Oh . . ." 
 
 " There's money owing to me several pounds that 
 I ought to get in a day or two," Patullo said, with 
 more of his usual manner. " In fact it's overdue. 
 I never like to press people. ... I could ask them to 
 give me credit only they might be unpleasant and, 
 in a thing like this, it isn't seemly." He was again 
 artlessly pathetic. 
 
 " Oh ! " Michael said in horror and pity. That 
 people should have to think about money in connec- 
 tion with such a thing ! . . . He saw the poor streets 
 of the city in a dreadful illumination : thousands of 
 little homes, unprotected, always on the verge of 
 destruction ; thousands of funerals toiling to and fro
 
 THE HEDGE OF THORNS 158 
 
 in rain and fog or in sunshine. Sometimes there was 
 a black box under the carriage and the poor mourners 
 rode above their dead. Sometimes the coffin was 
 carried in the hinder part of a hideous coach of two 
 compartments. Once, going round with Racie, who 
 was writing his specials for The Weekly Mercury, 
 Michael had seen a red-eyed man walking in and out of 
 crowds with a two-foot-long coffin in his arms. . . . 
 
 " Mr. Patullo, let me lend you take it from me 
 take it. Will you ? Do, for God's sake ! ... I'm 
 sick of this nonsense ! Why on the living earth should 
 one human being refuse anything another wants to 
 do for him ? " 
 
 Patullo looked at the tears falling down Michael's 
 face, then lowered his eyes and walked on. Michael 
 felt in his pocket for his sovereign-purse, in another 
 pocket for notes. 
 
 " There ... I don't know how much you need for 
 things like that : but please don't count it don't 
 remember it or try to make it go far. It's awful you 
 should have to bother. Tell me to-morrow and I'll 
 give you more. You'll want to get carriages and 
 flowers . . . and silver mounts on the . . . thing. 
 And you'll want to take him to some nice place, out 
 in the country. . . ." 
 
 Patullo' s fingers closed over the dark paper notes 
 with the little hard lump of the sovereigns folded in 
 their midst. They turned and went towards the car 
 station. 
 
 " I was looking for an undertaker's," said Patullo, 
 who kept peering about. " I think there is one down 
 that side street I see a lighted window. Yes." 
 
 " May I come to see you to-morrow ? " Michael 
 asked, one foot on the car. " Good night."
 
 154 THE ROSE-COLOURED ROOM 
 
 " Good night. Thank you," Patullo said. There 
 was a solemn stateliness in his manner as if he were 
 taking part in some noble ceremonial. 
 
 Before Michael reached Mrs. Wylie's, he had formed 
 a plan for endowing a Burial Society. It amazed him 
 that he had not had this idea before. He would 
 engage a number of secret officials who would go here 
 and there finding out poor people whose beloved dead 
 were in danger of being buried parochially. The great 
 difficulty was to avoid the appearance of patronage. 
 Michael had the fear, too, that in yielding to the 
 mourners' wishes in the matters of black plumes and 
 wreaths of immortelles, he might be retarding progress 
 by fostering false standards of aestheticism. Yet 
 what could one do ? One could not talk about the 
 poetry of burial by fire to beings who shuddered at 
 the bogey- word " cremation." One could not make 
 real the ugliness of blacks to mourners whose anguish 
 of inarticulateness must vent itself in a swathing of 
 sombre clothes. . . . Michael, with a regretful thought 
 of Rollo, began to plan his House for the Dead : he 
 sought for appropriate lines to have carved in the 
 entablatures, and remembered Spenser's : 
 
 . . . In seemlie sort their corses to engrave, 
 And deck with daintie flowers their brydall bed 
 That to their heavenly spouse both sweet and brave 
 They might appear when He their souls should save. 
 
 The wondrous workmanship of God's own mould 
 Whose face he made all beasts to fear and gave 
 All in his hand even dead we honour should. 
 Ah, dearest God, me graunt I dead be not defouled !
 
 THE HEDGE OF THORNS 155 
 
 As the lines swept, musical, through his being, he 
 again remembered Rollo ; dead at the beginning of 
 their swift, sure friendship, which had seemed in truth 
 to continue, not to commence. Michael had often 
 fancied that Rollo's spirit lurked about The Corner 
 House, that his voice might be heard calling from 
 room to room. In the white studio, Michael had 
 often prayed for the soul of his friend wandering in 
 unknown places. 
 
 The vision of the room came back to him the 
 searching light, the roses, the rood. Lately he had 
 had book-shelves put up and had filled them with 
 books specially bound in white collections of myths, 
 the great theosophical works of H. P. Blavatsky and 
 Annie Besant, the poems of Francis Thompson and 
 W. B. Yeats, the lives of many Romanist saints, the 
 Bible, and Thomas a Kempis. He thought now with 
 anger of the cost of this fad, which had not improved 
 the room, which had detracted somewhat from the 
 austerity which was its key-note. Nearly a hundred 
 pounds for white books while people, in side streets, 
 woebegone, were struggling for shillings to pay for 
 black clothes. The white books were beautiful and 
 the black garments ugly. What of that ? Let them 
 fling their ugliness, shriekingly, in the face of the 
 heartless world. 
 
 The figure of Thomas Patullo, like a doleful strike- 
 leader, seemed to emerge from the sorrowful black 
 crowd. Michael felt keenly grateful to Patullo : he 
 at least had not shown the cruel contempt of the 
 respectable poor for a helpless young man of great 
 possessions. Patullo Michael thought, with a warm- 
 ing of the heart would let him do more. He would 
 go to see Patullo next day.
 
 156 THE ROSE-COLOURED ROOM 
 
 The Trathbyes' hall door was opposite to Patullo's 
 on the same landing. Drusilla might come out ? Mrs. 
 Trathbye might come out and ask him to come in. ... 
 
 Ah ! He would bring a book for Miss Trathbye. 
 Had she read Spenser ? 
 
 He saw two boys considering him and wondered 
 if he had murmured the lines of Spenser aloud. Sud- 
 denly self-conscious, he hurried wincingly from their 
 sight : he was sure that one of them said : 
 
 " Loonie."
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 THE HAPPY WARRIOR 
 
 DRUSILLA, with an anxious glance at the door, opened 
 her writing-case. It was full of written sheets, and 
 she scanned them, critical of their neatness rather 
 than of the style and matter of the composition. At 
 the top of the first page she had written : " The 
 Choice of Colours in Dress." 
 
 The article seemed quite as good as most things 
 that she had read in women's papers : it was much 
 better than Aunt Caroline's columns, she thought : 
 she had been told in the art shop that she had a 
 wonderful eye for colour ; and she spent a great deal 
 of her spare time considering the windows of dress- 
 makers and milliners, and in imagination correcting 
 faults in their colour- schemes. 
 
 She pictured her article in print in The Glasgow 
 Newsboy and the coming of a cheque for ten shillings 
 or even a pound ? She would give it to her mother, 
 who would be surprised and (she hoped) pleased. 
 Aunt Caroline was not well : the cold lingered in her 
 defenceless little system. Mrs. Trathbye spoke of 
 calling in a doctor " But ah, goodness gracious, how 
 are we going to pay a doctor's bill ? " 
 
 Michael's uncle had written a courteous letter, 
 promising to keep Miss Caroline Trathbye in mind, 
 but as yet nothing had followed Drusilla's attempt at 
 journalism, begun secretly in defiance and assuming 
 the air of a philanthropic undertaking. 
 
 157
 
 158 THE ROSE-COLOURED ROOM 
 
 She was going to steal across and show the sheets 
 to Mr. Patullo, who had so kindly offered to point out 
 faults. His advice seemed very sensible : it was true 
 that any one could write. Drusilla would have pre- 
 ferred needlework, and thought with an ever-recurrent 
 throe of the shining studio above the art shop, the 
 odours of stains and polishes, the hollow sound of her 
 needle plunging deftly through the tightly stretched 
 stuff in her embroidery-ring. The manager, fair- 
 bearded and courteous, had looked at her with kind 
 eyes : so had the lame young man who did brass- 
 work. . . . 
 
 Drusilla put on her hat and took a volume of 
 H. G. Wells that Cowie had lent her. (" His ideas 
 aren't practicable, of course," Cowie had said. " You 
 can't change human nater. Still, it'll do you no 
 harm to get acquainted with him : I've learned a lot 
 from him myself " with that air of granting a certi- 
 ficate at which Drusilla always laughed, delightfully 
 quizzical and friendly.) She must go into the park 
 and read so as to explain her absence ; and must slip 
 into Patullo's flat as softly as possible, trusting to 
 being unheard by her mother and Aunt Caroline. For 
 the rest, the idea of reading in the park was a pleasant 
 one : the September day, following the wet night of 
 Michael's visit, was beautiful, a glory of blue sky, of 
 dazzling clouds, of white sunlight and violet shadows. 
 Drusilla often went there with Amy Cartwright, who 
 lived in the flat below. She felt happy as she shut 
 her own hall-door, and, after a pause of half-mirthful 
 listening, tapped timidly at Patullo's door. 
 
 There was an irresponsive silence within the house, 
 and she ventured another tap. Then she started as 
 she heard some one enter the close below.
 
 THE HAPPY WARRIOR 159 
 
 " Oh bother ! " Drusilla exclaimed. " These Glas- 
 gow tenements are so fussy : the stairs are never free 
 from people for a minute at a time." The Trathbye 
 girls had inherited from their mother a dogma that 
 they were not at home in a Glasgow tenement but 
 had really spent the greater part of their lives in a 
 large ancestral house in Gal way. " My girls are well 
 behaved because they were brought up in the country," 
 Mrs. Trathbye sometimes said almost in good faith ; 
 and she and Aunt Caroline were full of reminiscences 
 of old jests and adventures " at home at Croaghnai- 
 hill " referred to so often that the girls' minds had 
 long ago yielded to the implication that they too 
 looked back to Croaghnaihill as an unfaded reality. 
 Drusilla, in her nervous state, stood haughtily as the 
 steps mounted the stairs. They were like a man's 
 steps, big, noisy, and slouching. 
 
 " Oh ..." Drusilla, swirling round, saw Miss 
 Morland. The terror of Grace's loud voice made the 
 girl's face whiten. 
 
 " What are you doing here ? " Grace's manner was 
 coarse, there was a revolting fury of suspicion in her 
 eyes. 
 
 " Be quiet," Drusilla said, disgusted. " Don't 
 shout, please, Grace. I don't want them to know I'm 
 here." She glanced towards the Trathbyes' door. 
 
 " Why not ? What business have you here ? . . . 
 What are you looking so terrified for ? " 
 
 " I wish you'd be quiet," Drusilla repeated. " If 
 you want to see me will you go downstairs and wait ? 
 I'm going into the park. ... I want to see Mr. 
 Patullo about something he promised to do." 
 
 " What could he promise to do for you ? " Grace 
 shouted.
 
 160 THE ROSE-COLOURED ROOM 
 
 Drusilla was moved partly by her timidity, partly 
 by her lingering sense of discipleship ; chiefly by the 
 gentleness that was in her making it impossible for 
 her to armour herself in contempt. Her knowledge 
 of the source of Grace's disquiet was as yet scarcely 
 more than subconscious, but she tried to soothe the 
 excited woman. 
 
 " He offered to correct a paper I was writing. ..." 
 
 Some of the fierceness went out of Miss Morland's 
 face. She made one of her long, slouching steps, 
 sliding her foot between Drusilla and the door. 
 
 " Haven't you heard then ? Haven't you heard 
 anything ? " There was an exultation of importance 
 in Miss Morland's voice. " Mr. Patullo is in great 
 trouble, poor fellow. He wrote to me, asking me, 
 begging me to come to him. Isn't it extraordinary ? 
 He turns to me in such a way ... so awfully 
 pathetic. . . ." 
 
 Miss Morland was speaking in the inconsequent, 
 soliloquising way peculiar to her. Drusilla had heard 
 people comment on it as a result of long loneliness : 
 she herself was inclined to attribute it to that past 
 sorrow which had shattered Miss Morland's resolves 
 and slackened all her powers. Something with a man 
 in it ? ... 
 
 The light, coming brilliantly from above, fell on 
 Grace Morland's pale face, foolish, ignoble, touching : 
 there were heavy lines in her skin and the scanty 
 black and grey hair was thrust back under a girlish 
 conical hat of maize-coloured straw. She wore an old 
 coat of violet pastel cloth and a thin grey frock, very 
 short-skirted. Her brown boots were wrinkled and 
 dirty and her gloves, rolled into a ball, deformed one 
 of her pockets. Her clothes, at the time of their
 
 THE HAPPY WARRIOR 161 
 
 purchasing, had probably cost three times as much as 
 Brasilia's : but in her fatigue and dishevelment, she 
 looked like some uncouth monster affronting a dainty 
 princess in browns and yellows. 
 
 " I'd better go away . . . I'm sorry he's in trouble 
 ... I can see him again," Brasilia said in confusion. 
 She had thought that she heard footsteps in her 
 mother's flat. Of late Mrs. Trathbye had exaggerated 
 a habit of listening and pretending till long afterwards 
 that she had not heard. ... It would not be possible 
 to ask Grace to come in to see her mother and aunt. 
 Unexpected visitors caused dismay in the Trathbyes' 
 flat ; and Grace Morland was disliked by the whole 
 family, partly because of her oddities and affectations, 
 partly because the acquaintanceship with her marked 
 the beginning of a certain self-assertion in Brasilia. 
 . . . They were curt in speech to Miss Morland, and 
 Aunt Caroline mentioned coals and lights and the 
 trouble of extra dishes. 
 
 " We-ell, when shall I see you again ? " Miss 
 Morland said, suddenly friendly, as Brasilia turned 
 away. " You're going into the park ? " 
 
 " I'll wait for you in the Chrysanthemum Walk," 
 Brasilia said, and ran downstairs with her poor sheets 
 shut into the volume of H. G. Wells. 
 
 In the park she meditated, walking slowly between 
 the splendours of the blooms. Violet shadows lay 
 on the wet, sunny, blue-gleaming path : golden leaves, 
 transfused with sunlight, hung on the boughs already 
 half stripped. In Brasilia's brown costume, her wide 
 brown hat trimmed with yellow, and the shadowed 
 reds of her hair, the hues of the flowers were transposed 
 to a lower key. Only the crimson of her lips, the pinks 
 and whites of her face, had no counterparts in these 
 
 L
 
 162 THE ROSE-COLOURED ROOM 
 
 autumn blossoms, but were of summer, of the time of 
 roses. 
 
 Brasilia thought . . . lately she had begun to feel 
 doubtful if Grace had had a man in her past life a 
 man whose voice broke at parting, whose eyes over- 
 flowed, whose hand shook. ... It was rather difficult 
 to imagine Grace attracting a man : it was more than 
 difficult, it was impossible, to believe the tales that 
 she told of men who had loved her. " It was extra- 
 ordinary the devotion that man poured out," Grace 
 would say. " For five years, imagine ! I had nothing 
 to give in return, of course, and I told him so." She 
 had many reports of how engaged men, even married 
 men, had confided in her that they were unhappy, 
 had not found true helpmates. " Isn't it extra- 
 ordinary, Brasilia ? There seems to be something in 
 me that brings men to confide in me men who might 
 almost be my father." Grace's habit of relating these 
 stories in public, often on cars where her loud voice 
 must attract attention, had not endeared her to 
 Brasilia. The stories were full of contradictions : 
 they could not be credited even by Brasilia with her 
 gentle faith and pride in the honour of her sex. Nor 
 could she continue to believe in the " happy life," the 
 " hosts of friends " and the " first-class education " 
 to which Miss Morland noisily laid claim. Grace's 
 accomplishments fell to pieces as fast as the hands of 
 a closer acquaintanceship were retched to grasp 
 them. The hosts of friends dwindled to a few middle- 
 aged and elderly married couples and single women 
 who wore " sports " coats indoors. Patullo seemed 
 to be Miss Morland's only male friend : she was 
 hardly tolerated by the young men at the Eire. 
 Brusilla had the terrifying insight that goes with
 
 THE HAPPY WARRIOR 163 
 
 singleness of heart : she realised that, whereas in the 
 case of her mother and Aunt Caroline, circumstances 
 had imposed a layer of coarseness, in speech and habit, 
 on creatures formerly decent, Miss Morland had sought 
 to cover with an imitation of refinement a coarseness 
 that was hers by birth. Drusilla's soft eyes had 
 watched Miss Morland, eating untidily in her lodgings, 
 hacking at a lump of butter half swathed in paper. 
 . . . She was run down hi mind and body : her 
 manners were unpleasant ; she never talked about 
 anything but her own affairs. She was already boring 
 to Drusilla, who knew so little of life. How could she 
 ever have held the interest of a man, who, according 
 to the women's papers, was a creature so easily bored ? 
 
 She may have been different once. Vaguely, 
 Drusilla was beginning to imagine a life utterly un- 
 like her own ; a life longer but resultant in a weari- 
 ness not due to its length. A life all broken into 
 pinchbeck fragments, full of concealments, pretences, 
 piteous failing attempts ; ending now in that jolting, 
 jerking vivacity, that dismal feigned fitness, that sick 
 aimlessness and languid doubt. . . . 
 
 " Poor soul ! " Drusilla thought tenderly. It would 
 be so easy to pity Grace, to love her if only she 
 weren't so spiteful and would stop telling lies. She 
 made claims on society that she could not substantiate. 
 Why couldn't she be content to claim nothing and 
 beg all ? As a beggar, she would be dear and touching 
 and a constant sop to one's egotism. . . . 
 
 " I used to depend so much on Grace," Drusilla 
 thought, smiling, wondering. The thought came to 
 her that now her self-respect had awakened : she had 
 been dreaming, uneasily, often unhappily : she had 
 started up at the sound of bugles. . . .
 
 162 THE ROSE-COLOURED ROOM 
 
 autumn blossoms, but were of summer, of the time of 
 roses. 
 
 Brasilia thought . . . lately she had begun to feel 
 doubtful if Grace had had a man in her past life a 
 man whose voice broke at parting, whose eyes over- 
 flowed, whose hand shook. ... It was rather difficult 
 to imagine Grace attracting a man : it was more than 
 difficult, it was impossible, to believe the tales that 
 she told of men who had loved her. " It was extra- 
 ordinary the devotion that man poured out," Grace 
 would say. " For five years, imagine ! I had nothing 
 to give in return, of course, and I told him so." She 
 had many reports of how engaged men, even married 
 men, had confided hi her that they were unhappy, 
 had not found true helpmates. " Isn't it extra- 
 ordinary, Brasilia ? There seems to be something in 
 me that brings men to confide in me men who might 
 almost be my father." Grace's habit of relating these 
 stories in public, often on cars where her loud voice 
 must attract attention, had not endeared her to 
 Brasilia. The stories were full of contradictions : 
 they could not be credited even by Brasilia with her 
 gentle faith and pride in the honour of her sex. Nor 
 could she continue to believe in the " happy life," the 
 " hosts of friends " and the " first-class education " 
 to which Miss Morland noisily laid claim. Grace's 
 accomplishments fell to pieces as fast as the hands of 
 a closer acquaintanceship were retched to grasp 
 them. The hosts of friends dwindled to a few middle- 
 aged and elderly married couples and single women 
 who wore " sports " coats indoors. Patullo seemed 
 to be Miss Morland' s only male friend : she was 
 hardly tolerated by the young men at the Eire. 
 Brasilia had the terrifying insight that goes with
 
 THE HAPPY WARRIOR 163 
 
 singleness of heart : she realised that, whereas in the 
 case of her mother and Aunt Caroline, circumstances 
 had imposed a layer of coarseness, in speech and habit, 
 on creatures formerly decent, Miss Morland had sought 
 to cover with an imitation of refinement a coarseness 
 that was hers by birth. Drusilla's soft eyes had 
 watched Miss Morland, eating untidily in her lodgings, 
 hacking at a lump of butter half swathed in paper. 
 . . . She was run down in mind and body : her 
 manners were unpleasant ; she never talked about 
 anything but her own affairs. She was already boring 
 to Drusilla, who knew so little of life. How could she 
 ever have held the interest of a man, who, according 
 to the women's papers, was a creature so easily bored ? 
 
 She may have been different once. Vaguely, 
 Drusilla was beginning to imagine a life utterly un- 
 like her own ; a life longer but resultant in a weari- 
 ness not due to its length. A life all broken into 
 pinchbeck fragments, full of concealments, pretences, 
 piteous failing attempts ; ending now in that jolting, 
 jerking vivacity, that dismal feigned fitness, that sick 
 aimlessness and languid doubt. . . . 
 
 " Poor soul ! " Drusilla thought tenderly. It would 
 be so easy to pity Grace, to love her if only she 
 weren't so spiteful and would stop telling lies. She 
 made claims on society that she could not substantiate. 
 Why couldn't she be content to claim nothing and 
 beg all ? As a beggar, she would be dear and touching 
 and a constant sop to one's egotism. . . . 
 
 " I used to depend so much on Grace," Drusilla 
 thought, smiling, wondering. The thought came to 
 her that now her self-respect had awakened : she had 
 been dreaming, uneasily, often unhappily : she had 
 started up at the sound of bugles. . . .
 
 166 THE ROSE-COLOURED ROOM 
 
 her ! No terrors could come to her in such a world, 
 no sordid monsters of sorrow and hate. Michael's 
 sword would fell them all. . . . Besides there were 
 so many beautiful women in that world that no one 
 would hate her for being beautiful. 
 
 At the whimsical thought she smiled, the grave red 
 mouth curving into glee. Michael's smile came to 
 meet hers and gambolled with it into a laughter which 
 neither of them sought to explain. The corner of the 
 park was as a garden of enchantment in which phan- 
 tasies were known as intense realities and the material 
 things of physical life showed only as pallid distant 
 ghosts and grotesques. 
 
 There was a sound of footsteps big, slouching, 
 slack, like the steps of a man who was tired or drunk. 
 Drusilla saw Miss Morland turning the corner from 
 the Chrysanthemum Walk. 
 
 Michael had just been speaking of beautiful words 
 and conjunctions of words of Homer's *' hollow black 
 ships," of Rossetti's " dust and flame," of Robert 
 Buchanan's " divine dark day of emerald calm," of 
 Coleridge's " restless gossamers," of Spenser's " fair 
 lawnds " and Keats's " tawny oats." It came to 
 Drusilla, with a bitter cold sense of being only a 
 stranger in his country, that the word that flashed 
 through her brain at the sight of Grace Morland was 
 the miserable commercial one " shop-tossed." Yet 
 it was powerfully descriptive, Drusilla thought : 
 Grace's life, her soul, as well as her person, gave one 
 an impression of having been " shop-tossed." She 
 had lain about in a litter of dust and oddments, and 
 had become worn without ever having been of use. 
 
 As the dusty, dishevelled figure came near it seemed 
 like a fustian monster threading the paths of the
 
 THE HAPPY WARRIOR 167 
 
 enchanted garden where the prince and princess sat 
 in happiness. They both rose at its approach. To 
 Drusilla it came as a reminder of the passing of time 
 in the old world of pretences that she had left. To 
 Michael the figure brought a great start of shame 
 and remorse. He had forgotten Patullo. He was 
 altogether unworthy of Drusilla his selfish, shallow 
 irresponsibility made him a danger to this unfolding 
 rose with its delicate heart of white and gold. How 
 could he hope to handle it with enough of reverence 
 and of tenderness ? 
 
 "We ell? Is this the Chrysanthemum Walk, 
 kiddie ? " Miss Morland asked gaily. 
 
 " No," Drusilla replied. " I waited a long time 
 then I sat down here. Mr. Quentin had been up at 
 our house with a book." 
 
 " I see with a book," Miss Morland said quizzi- 
 cally. She glanced curiously from one to the other. 
 Drusilla was watching her in wonder : the fatigue 
 and look of suffering that she had noted when they 
 were at Patullo' s door had certainly deepened in 
 Miss Morland's face. She looked tragic now, almost 
 grand, in her pallor, with her deep lines and gazing 
 eyes : so that Drusilla wondered how she could ever 
 have said " Grace " to a woman so old and of such 
 sore experiences. Yet Miss Morland's curiosity was 
 plainly quite genuine : it was one of her weaknesses 
 most irritating to Drusilla a flunkey appetite for 
 material facts and gossip about all persons, within or 
 without the circle of her acquaintance. 
 
 " Isn't it awful about Mr. Patullo, Mick ? " Miss 
 Morland said eagerly to Michael, who had been about 
 to excuse himself. " Isn't it extraordinary how he 
 adored that child ? His wife oh "
 
 168 THE ROSE-COLOURED ROOM 
 
 She rambled on, speaking with an utter openness, 
 deviating every now and then into other subjects, 
 telling little spiteful stories of Patullo's wife, of the 
 shifts and miseries of his life with her. Patullo had 
 told her that Michael knew everything : but it is 
 doubtful if she would have restrained herself in his 
 hearing in any case : she neither asked, nor seemed 
 to care, whether Drusilla was informed or not, but 
 talked incoherently, incessantly, irrelevantly, as if 
 the spring of her will were broken. 
 
 " We-ell, here's my car," she said at the gate of the 
 park. " Don't be late for tea, or the old lady'll be 
 
 mad. No, no, dear, I've no idea of staying " as 
 
 Drusilla made a false faltering offer. 
 
 As the car hummed away Drusilla and Michael 
 looked at each other ; puzzled, compassionate, 
 ashamed that they were so happy, that they cared so 
 little about poor old Patullo and Miss Morland that 
 they could hardly bring themselves to think or speak 
 of them. Michael, especially, found this thing strange 
 for he believed that Love opened wide the doors of 
 the human heart for the admission of God and all 
 one's fellow human beings. He could only conclude 
 sadly that his love was as yet a feeble thing all 
 unworthy of this fair princess. 
 
 Oh, it would grow ! He would water it with prayer- 
 ful tears : he would make all his life a cry for puri- 
 fication. He would wait and prove himself. All his 
 fellows would be dear to him for her sake : he would 
 feed the hungry and clothe the naked and watch by 
 the dead for her sake. He would comfort the com- 
 fortless not only Irishmen but all men in all coun- 
 tries. As he had dreamed of Ireland, glorified, as the 
 centre of a world of faith, so he now saw his love-lit
 
 THE HAPPY WARRIOR 169 
 
 life like a bright evangelising island in the midst of a 
 dark world of calumny and envy and grief. 
 
 It did not occur to him to fear that she might not 
 understand his tribute of waiting. She was young : 
 love was surely only stirring in her heart. For her, 
 too, there must be the misty, vaguely glorious days 
 of expectancy. That was the meaning of the note in 
 her voice, the smile that had suddenly shone from her 
 eyes. She had faith she would mistake no footstep 
 for Love's. Let her have her enchanted time of wait- 
 ing and wondering in the garden, mazy, mysterious 
 in the morning light, full of hinted glories. God 
 Himself, reverent, stood by and left to the rose its 
 own time of unfolding. 
 
 " Good-bye," Drusilla said blissfully at Patullo's 
 door. 
 
 " Good-bye," Michael said blissfully. 
 
 Michael went into Patullo's and found the poor man 
 drinking tea and brandy. Drusilla entered the 
 Trathbyes' flat : the little hall showed a darkness of 
 shut doors, and she hurried to the kitchen. 
 
 " Late, of course," Aunt Caroline said. 
 
 "It's a queer thing how you can never be hi to a 
 meal in time," Mrs. Trathbye said in her hyperbolic 
 manner of speaking. 
 
 " Grace Morland came we were in the park in 
 the Chrysanthemum Walk," Drusilla said. She hated 
 the deceptiveness of this tried to explain found 
 that she could not. The Trathbyes had not the habit 
 of listening. Mrs. Trathbye and Aunt Caroline 
 generally walked away or began to talk about some- 
 thing else ; and afterwards they would complain that 
 they were told nothing, that Drusilla was growing 
 amazingly secretive.
 
 170 THE ROSE-COLOURED ROOM 
 
 " I met Michael Quentin too," Drusilla said. 
 
 " By appointment ? " Mrs. Trathbye asked. 
 
 Essie laughed, trying to make a joke of it, ashamed 
 of her mother's bitter agitated tone. 
 
 " He was here, of course," she said. " Aunt Carlie 
 told him you were in the park and he went on. . . . 
 I suppose he's well off, Dillie ? " 
 
 " I don't know," Drusilla said, laughing. She took 
 off her hat and coat and sat down. As she laid down 
 the volume of Spenser she remembered with a sort 
 of mental gasp that she had left the volume of H. G. 
 Wells in the park. Her written article seemed to her 
 now a foolish, futile thing, and it was easy to acquiesce 
 in its loss, though she flushed at the idea of it being 
 found and read. 
 
 " Did you know that Miss Morland had been in 
 Mr. Patullo's house all the afternnon ? " Mrs. Trathbye 
 asked, looking darkly at her daughter. 
 
 " Mr. Patullo's in trouble he asked her to come 
 they're very old friends he used to coach her," 
 Drusilla jerked out, with a shameful sense of her 
 mother's deterioration. " A little while ago she 
 would never have said such a thing ! " Drusilla said 
 to herself ; and saw the thought reflected in Essie's 
 face. 
 
 " Ah, a likely story ! " Mrs. Trathbye said. " It's 
 a long time since she was coached in anything." She 
 began to laugh in her roguish irresistible manner, and 
 the girls laughed too. 
 
 " He's never given me my two shillings back," Mrs. 
 Trathbye said with intense amusement. 
 
 " Agh, he's a drunken old wretch," Aunt Caroline 
 said. " He is. He's always drunk." 
 
 " It's rather reckless to be bringing charges like
 
 THE HAPPY WARRIOR 171 
 
 that against people," Essie complained to Mrs. 
 Trathbye. " She'd say it anywhere. She says things 
 without a bit of sense." 
 
 "I've seen him drunk I have so," Aunt Caroline 
 protested ; but the rebuke was received with some 
 deference as it came from the moderate and business- 
 like Essie. Mrs. Trathbye graduated her descent into 
 silence by saying : " Ah, children, what can you know 
 about men or women ? " 
 
 " Will you pass the bread, Aunt Carlie ? " Drusilla 
 asked coldly. 
 
 Aunt Caroline, rather subdued, passed it. 
 
 " I forgot to tell you Mr. Cowie called too this 
 afternoon," she said. 
 
 Oh ..." Drusilla' s face was gleeful. 
 
 : ' With a book," Aunt Caroline explained. 
 
 II 
 
 At the Eire Club there were remarks passed on the 
 intimacy between Mr. Quentin and Mr. Patullo. It 
 was obvious to the lean woman in the sables that old 
 Patullo had succeeded in getting on to the soft side 
 of Michael Quentin. (The lean woman added some- 
 thing to her reputation as a wit by expressing a fear 
 that all the sides that Michael had were soft ones.) 
 Patullo was being " spoken about " in the club : 
 there were rumours that he had borrowed money from 
 various members ; that he had, on several occasions, 
 come to the meetings when it would have been more 
 prudent to have remained at home. The story of the 
 child had not penetrated to the Eire Club : it was not 
 known even at the Mission : for Mrs. Quinn was a 
 woman of absolute loyalty and delicacy, and the
 
 172 THE ROSE-COLOURED ROOM 
 
 secret had remained a secret, perhaps because there 
 had been no strenuous efforts to keep it so. Yet the 
 lean woman and her stout companion whose per- 
 sonalities were magnetic to gossip had " heard 
 somewhere " that Patullo was married and living apart 
 from his wife. It was only necessary to look at Patullo 
 to see who was in the wrong : these two women had 
 an antagonism to men which they mistook for sex 
 loyalty. Patullo, from being simply jeerable, began 
 to be monstrous in their sight : and the favouritism 
 shown to him by Michael was a further proof of the 
 young man's eccentricity and his purse-proud in- 
 difference to the feelings of the respectable members 
 of the club. He took Patullo about in his motor ! 
 
 The lean woman, considering Miss Morland, hoped 
 that Mrs. Patullo poor thing ! had not even worse 
 to bear. Even a society which is an organic whole 
 contains the germs of dissolution ; and the Eire Club 
 had never been an organism. Its cleavage into 
 parties became a distinct and acknowledged thing. 
 Alexander Cowie, without effort, almost unconsciously, 
 had rallied round him the young men and nearly all 
 the middle-aged women. Besides Drusilla, there were 
 only two girls in the club a pair of Irish sisters of 
 humble birth, shop-girls, pretty, prim, and soft-eyed, 
 who wrote religious verses and were too unpreten- 
 tious to refuse to admire Drusilla. They called her 
 " awfully sweet " and "lovely"; regretting that she 
 " did not make the most of herself " but wore her 
 hair in such a dreadful tousle. Because she was 
 quiet and choice in her speech, they believed that 
 she was well-educated and deferred to her on all 
 matters which had no connection with dress. They 
 saw that she belonged to Michael Quentin's party
 
 THE HAPPY WARRIOR 178 
 
 and they stood by Michael and Racie and old Patullo. 
 But they found it rather difficult to treat Miss Morland 
 as a comrade : her violent partisanship was felt to 
 be a disgrace. 
 
 " I wouldn't worry about that woman parading an 
 enthusiasm for you," Racie said to Michael one night 
 in October, as they left the club. " I mean her 
 enthusiasm for you as Chairman. Of course it is 
 making you more unpopular every meeting ; but 
 you're bound to be unpopular anyway." 
 
 " Thanks," Michael said with an annoyed laugh. 
 
 "It's not an insult exactly," Racie said, with his 
 sideways glance. " She's a silly woman. She has 
 talked about the extraordinary Platonic friendship 
 between her and old Patullo till she's driven people 
 into thinking it can't be Platonic. If you repeat a 
 thing often enough you're sure to make some one 
 suspect it's not true." 
 
 " I never heard such stuff," Michael panted out. 
 " Patullo's an old man." 
 
 " Patullo drinks," Racie said. " I'd believe him 
 if he said he was not fifty yet." 
 
 " Well fifty 1 " Michael uttered. "What's the 
 good of staying alive as long as that if it doesn't 
 insure you against scandal ? " 
 
 " Miss Morland's single gift is the making of 
 scandal," Racie said. " Haven't you noticed she's 
 that sort of woman ? I'm saying nothing against 
 her " 
 
 "Oh no; of course not," Michael jeered. . . . "It's 
 shameful to be applying words like that to the poor 
 lady." 
 
 " Words ? " Racie came near saying : ". Wurruds ?" 
 
 " Well, you called her a woman," Michael said.
 
 174 THE ROSE-COLOURED ROOM 
 
 " You know ' woman ' is a term of reproach. People 
 are called women only in low newspaper paragraphs." 
 
 " ' Poor lady ' is just as bad," Racie retorted. " It 
 has a clinical suggestion. . . . All I mean is that Miss 
 Morland has a personality. ... If she were a pretty 
 lady she would break up families ; she might do 
 it if she were brilliant without being pretty. As she's 
 neither, she only half does everything : she has all 
 the disadvantages of her sex without any of its 
 privileges. She's the kind of woman men dislike 
 and other women are ready to love. But she sacrifices 
 women's friendship to clutch at a thing that isn't for 
 her men's admiration, that's to say. . . . She's a 
 silly . . . lady." 
 
 Michael, irritably aware of some truth in Racie's 
 words, stopped to watch a street artist, who by the 
 glow of a lamp was plastering the kerb with colours. 
 The man had made a copy of an Asti head, red-haired 
 and white-throated ; and crude as the thing was 
 its hint of florescent beauty recalled Drusilla. . . . 
 As Michael dropped money into the flaccid, suppliant 
 cap, he thought of the dragging footsteps of the pave- 
 ment woman who had passed under his windows that 
 night in summer ; of the heavy and the light footsteps 
 that had passed away side by side. A woman bar- 
 gaining for the things she needed most food and 
 shelter and clothes ; the horrible profane craving to 
 go on living after she had bartered her soul ! ... It 
 was a solemn thought that Drusilla also was a woman : 
 it was not possible to understand how, with needs so 
 different, two creatures came to be called of the same 
 species. 
 
 " The trouble with you," Racie's voice came, " is 
 that you aren't a bit interested in your kind. Not
 
 THE HAPPY WARRIOR 175 
 
 really. You are bored by me talking about Miss 
 Morland." 
 
 " Lord knows I am ! " Michael interjected. 
 
 " Who's obvious now ? " Racie said. " The woman 
 doesn't interest you qua woman." Michael groaned. 
 " Yes, qua's Mercurial," Racie said. " I had to get 
 your attention. Miss Morland has personality. She's 
 all made up of inferior stuff but she bulks largely." 
 
 " How dare you say she's all of inferior stuff ? " 
 Michael said. " Uh " 
 
 He and Racie lifted their hats. In the lighted and 
 shadowed street Miss Morland and Patullo, walking 
 quickly, passed them. 
 
 " How about Miss Trathbye ? " Racie asked, 
 elaborately off-hand. 
 
 " Oh, Cowie's seeing her home," Michael said. 
 " I suppose he'd asked her and she couldn't get 
 out of it." 
 
 Racie looked hard at his friend. Michael spoke 
 confidently. His face was bafflingly happy and 
 serene. ... It was too obvious to Racie that Cowie 
 would have no chance with the Trathbyes. A widow 
 knew better than to prefer a struggling young doctor 
 of low birth to Michael Quentin with his five thousand 
 a year. Oh, she would swallow the public-houses ! 
 
 " I wish I could do something for Patullo," Michael 
 said fervently. " He really cares for poetry and art 
 and everything worth bothering about. I'm con- 
 vinced that he could easily be got to keep straight 
 if only one could hit on a plan. . . ." 
 
 " Oh, by Jupiter, if it's a plan that's wanted ! . . ." 
 Racie said. He added, with a sudden emotion waving 
 across his face : " How many plans have you made 
 for people, Mick ? "
 
 176 THE ROSE-COLOURED ROOM 
 
 Alexander Cowie often indeed generally did see 
 Drusilla home from the meetings of the Eire Club. 
 His habit was to overtake her quietly as she left the 
 hall and either to murmur his request or speechlessly 
 to act as if it were granted. The club rooms were in 
 the neighbourhood of Buchanan Street, hi Burke 
 Place, exclusive and poorly lighted ; and, though 
 Cowie's boots creaked loudly amid the silent solid 
 buildings, not even the lean woman had noticed that 
 he habitually went home with Miss Trathbye. It was 
 partly owing to Cowie's promptitude and discretion ; 
 but more to a certain weightiness in his character. 
 In Cowie's conception of his relationship with his 
 fellows he had not left room for the ideas that he could 
 be absurd or censurable. He would have said himself 
 that he had " no use for " people whose standards 
 were different from his own ; and his absolute con- 
 fidence in his conformity to those standards must be 
 reflected as respect in the hearts of his companions. 
 
 He knew that Drusilla chaffed him : but a young 
 woman's chaff of a young man did not mean that he 
 struck her as ridiculous. Cowie, smiling, knew that 
 it meant something different. . . . 
 
 Rising to speak at the Eire Club, Cowie always 
 looked, with unswerving bright eyes, at the Chairman. 
 He found Michael Quentin amusing ; and the fact 
 that Michael had money for which he did not work 
 was offensive to all the traditions of Cowie's set. He, 
 and the excellent young men who were his com- 
 panions, were contemptuous of rich men who had 
 made no efforts ; they had a genuine scorn for any- 
 thing that was " unbusinesslike " or " unwholesome " 
 anything that suggested " side." " La-di-da ! " 
 they said of Michael's motor, his shirt-front, and his
 
 THE HAPPY WARRIOR 177 
 
 house at Fauldstane. Why could not Michael stay 
 in his proper place and leave them alone ? They had 
 the snobbery of men of economical and hard-working 
 habits for an unclassed being who had no right to a 
 share in the scurrying City life. Cowie, at least, had 
 no stronger feeling than this half-conscious one against 
 Michael Quentin : he was amused by the poor fellow's 
 nervousness and felt a kind of admiration for Michael's 
 flow of words the meaning of which it was not worth 
 while to pursue. Cowie took scarcely more heed of 
 him than he did of a cloud in the sky, or of the 
 Humanitarian Movement in Britain, or of Bahaism in 
 Persia : Michael Quentin was like these, an uncom- 
 prehended thing, moving in another sphere, a fantastic 
 and unsubstantial thing which had its own out- 
 blazings of light and its own mysterious tempests. . . . 
 
 As for thinking of Michael as a rival how could 
 Alexander Cowie do that ? Cowie was almost sure 
 that Drusilla cared for him : he regarded her as a 
 member of his own class, and Michael as a despicable 
 swell who would marry a " Society woman." Cowie 
 knew that Society women were not nice people : a 
 fellow who had been intimate with them could never 
 settle down with a quiet girl like Drusilla. Society 
 women always had money, and moneyed men always 
 married money. 
 
 It is a fact that Michael Quentin had even less 
 thought of Cowie as a rival. To Michael it seemed 
 that every one who met Drusilla must be immediately 
 aware of her difference from all the other members of 
 the Eire Club, and indeed from all other people on 
 earth. Michael was not absolutely deluded in this 
 faith : for Drusilla, by reason of her retired life, her 
 exquisite sensuousness, and her beauty, showed 
 
 M
 
 178 THE ROSE-COLOURED ROOM 
 
 uniquely among her associates. Some of them were 
 repelled by this rareness in her, a few like the two 
 pretty shop-girls were charmed by it : most were 
 rendered dimly uneasy and resentful. Alexander 
 Cowie was probably the only person in the Eire Club 
 who felt at home with Drusilla. For a variety of 
 reasons, Cowie was incapable of knowing that she was 
 essentially different from other girls of his acquaint- 
 ance. 
 
 Where Drusilla was concerned, Michael left Cowie 
 out of account ; as completely as the inhabitant of a 
 cloudland castle might ignore the cashier of the bank 
 in a street below. The burning, stinging pains that 
 Cowie could make Michael feel were not the stirrings 
 of an unacknowledged jealousy : they were simply the 
 throes of an unsuccessful, sensitive man, knowing 
 himself be-mocked and fancying far more cruelty 
 than lived in the scoffer. Michael had felt from their 
 first night of meeting that Cowie noticed his flushings 
 and palings, his agitations, his stammer : he felt that 
 Cowie knew that he had no place of his own in the 
 social structure. He was envious of Cowie's goings 
 to and fro, his popularity and cheerfulness, his nor- 
 mality, his absolute contentment with himself and 
 his own people, his own health and good looks, his 
 moderate success in business, his amusements, his 
 accent. It was idle to try to imagine Cowie trans- 
 ported into a different society and, flushed and uneasy, 
 acknowledging that he was not normal ; for he made 
 a solid whole with his surroundings. He was so truly 
 a part of them that it was not possible to believe that 
 they had been more creative of him than he of them. 
 The absence of social ambition in him, his freedom 
 from shames for himself or his friends, gave him
 
 THE HAPPY WARRIOR 179 
 
 immunity from suffering. Once or twice Michael had 
 aimed a quivering sarcasm at him : but Cowie had 
 not understood. 
 
 It was this very contentment of Cowie's that had 
 made it impossible for Michael to see that he loved 
 Drusilla. A creature, however uncouth, who was 
 shaken by noble angers and divine doubts, might have 
 looked up to this princess and despairingly re- 
 joicingly loved her. A Caliban not a counter- 
 jumper ! Cowie with his tan boots and trim trousers, 
 his rosy cheeks and cushiony little dark moustache 
 and pretty eyes, his jests and quotations from popular 
 weeklies what had he to do with Love's frenzies 
 and raptures, Love's dishevelments and exhaustions ? 
 ... It was utterly clear that Cowie would not under 
 any circumstances have understood Drusilla. If the 
 idea of him loving her had been presented to Michael 
 he would have found it not laughable only because it 
 was too profane for mirth. When he sat at the green 
 table at the Eire Club and felt his knees tremble when 
 Cowie rose, it was not because he saw in him Drusilla's 
 lover : the struggle between them was as yet just the 
 same as on the night of their first meeting the eternal 
 struggle between the solemnity of the dreamer and the 
 practical man's frivolity. It was with no fear, with 
 no anger, and with hardly any disappointment that 
 Michael watched Drusilla go away with Cowie that 
 night in October. 
 
 In the grey-blackness of Burke Place, splashed with 
 the golden green lights of incandescent lamps, Drusilla 
 walked along beside Cowie ; thinking of him a little 
 because she was in his presence. She had noticed 
 that girls usually did not like him and, idly, sought 
 the reason : but her interest in him was too superficial
 
 180 THE ROSE-COLOURED ROOM 
 
 and he faded out of her thoughts. Cowie was clearly 
 very popular with his fellow-men ; and middle-aged 
 and elderly women were almost demonstrative in their 
 affection for him. He had told Drusilla that he was 
 twenty-seven and had never " gone with " any girl ; 
 and, after she had got over her amusement at the 
 vulgar phrase, she had found, with a feeling of surprise, 
 that the fact was just as she would have guessed. In 
 her laziness and her coldness to Cowie, she explained 
 it by thinking that, in spite of his self -rejoicing, he 
 was probably shy of young women. She understood 
 why he had told her and smiled every time that she 
 recalled it. She felt sure of her power over him : she 
 had no suspicion that his unpopularity among girls 
 was a sign of his indomitable character : yet, dimly, 
 she was every now and then aware of the masculine 
 force latent in him. It was like a gigantic creature 
 too thick-hided to be tickled into annoyance or 
 pleasure by the light fingers of her mockery. 
 
 This night, as they left the Eire, Drusilla was gay. 
 The paper had been an exquisite one, about dreams 
 and omens, delivered by a Dublin friend of Racie's. 
 What was called a discussion had followed, and, 
 mysteriously, the members of the Eire Club had leapt 
 into a dispute about cremation. It had filled Drusilla 
 with happiness to find Michael's eyes, brimming with 
 laughter, seeking hers : she had been aware of a 
 different quality in his merriment : he was no longer 
 bitter in his disappointment, he no longer took the 
 Eire Club seriously. Something else filled his heart. 
 
 " I didn't think much of yon, did you, Miss Trath- 
 bye ? " Cowie was saying as they walked. " Dreams 
 are made up of cheese and underdone potatoes " 
 
 " And lobster," Drusilla scoffed.
 
 THE HAPPY WARRIOR 181 
 
 Cowie laughed, thinking she offered it as her con- 
 tribution of wit. " You don't dream, do you ? " he 
 asked, with a little anxiety. 
 
 " Often," Drusilla said. " I never dreamed of 
 cheese nor lobster, but I sometimes do dream of things 
 to eat." 
 
 " That's the result of going to bed on an empty 
 stomach," Cowie said gravely. " Let me advise you 
 not to do that. I believe in a light supper, but that's 
 a very different thing from one that isn't nourishing." 
 
 Drusilla had flushed, thinking of the insufficient 
 suppers at home, especially when " poor John " had 
 made one of his locust-like descents upon them. 
 
 " What do you eat at night, may I ask ? " Cowie 
 said. 
 
 " Good gracious ! I don't want you to be sending 
 me a bill for consultations," Drusilla said. " I eat 
 bread . . . biscuits . . . apples and things . . ." 
 
 " Milk ? " Cowie asked. 
 
 " Sometimes," Drusilla said. The Trathbyes used 
 only threepenny-worth of milk a day. 
 
 " Brown bread ? You look well. . . . You have 
 always good health, Miss Trathbye ? " 
 
 " Yes," Drusilla said, bubbling with laughter. 
 They reached the car station and, on the journey, she 
 must listen to a long grave lecture from Cowie about 
 diet, maintaining the temperature of the body, even 
 about clothing. Now and then a little " ki-iigh ! " 
 of laughter escaped Drusilla, but Cowie, intent, neither 
 paused nor took offence. She found, afterwards, 
 that he had asked her a great many personal questions 
 and that she had answered them all. 
 
 " Here we are," Cowie said. They were a little late 
 at rising and, as they were descending the stair, the
 
 182 THE ROSE-COLOURED ROOM 
 
 car started again. Drusilla swayed forwards and 
 Cowie quickly clasped his arm about her and lifted 
 her on to the platform. He jumped to the road, still 
 holding her, surprised and thrilled by the strength of 
 his arm. 
 
 Ill 
 
 As they went up the Trathbyes' street, Cowie 
 discussed the suggestion of complaining of the guard, 
 whose number he had noticed. 
 
 " Don't be ridiculous ! " Drusilla said, amused. 
 She was all the more merry because she felt inclined to 
 yield to the general tendency to take Cowie seriously. 
 She found herself glancing at his sleeve and visualising 
 the strong white arm within. 
 
 Cowie went on prosing till he had said all that he 
 wanted to say ; then he stopped, and laughed. 
 
 " Miss Trathbye, do you know you're the only 
 woman I know who takes her fun out of me ? " 
 
 " Your mother and sisters . . . ? " Drusilla sug- 
 gested. He had told her about them Bessie, the 
 eldest, who sang a great deal at concerts, and " wee 
 Aggie " whom Drusilla pictured as a pretty child. 
 
 " It's not in their line," Cowie said with his tolerant 
 smile. " They're very good sort of girls, but they're 
 not clever. I couldn't talk to them about littery 
 things the way I do to you. They're first-rate at cake- 
 baking and all that kind of thing. Wee Aggie took 
 a prize for a currant cake at our church bazaar." 
 
 " How good ! " Drusilla said. She remembered 
 reading that really nice young men always talked 
 about their mothers and sisters and was ashamed of 
 her own tendency to feel bored. Cowie went on to
 
 THE HAPPY WARRIOR 183 
 
 give a laughing account of wee Aggie's mixing of the 
 cake and the number of dishes that she had " re- 
 quisitioned." 
 
 " But we all have our own lines," Cowie said 
 suddenly. He looked at her anxiously with shining 
 eyes. " I think women have a perfect right to develop 
 their own individualities. I shouldn't think of 
 limiting an intellectual woman like yourself say to 
 domestic work." 
 
 " But I'm not intellectual," Drusilla said, with a 
 flash of her teeth between the smiling red lips. " I'm 
 one of the most ignorant, uneducated people you 
 could imagine. I'm fond of poetry and music and 
 pictures, that's all. I couldn't make anything." 
 
 " Well the feminine brain is not creative," Cowie 
 said. " That is so. Say a cultured woman or an 
 artistic woman, if you like. ' Intellectual woman ' 
 makes you think of a rather masculine sort of person." 
 They were opposite the Trathbyes' close and Cowie 
 laid a pleading hand on Drusilla's arm. " Walk to 
 the end of the terrace, will you ? It's such a fine 
 night." 
 
 It was a windy dusty night and Lochaber Gardens 
 was built on a steep slope : but Drusilla turned, not 
 displeased by the wistfulness in Cowie's manner. 
 Self-consciousness made her begin to talk quickly. 
 
 " You spoke about your church bazaar ? I thought 
 you didn't go to any church ? " 
 
 Cowie expanded in self-delight. 
 
 " That is so. As a rule I do not. But I've never 
 given up being a member of our church I've never 
 lifted my lines. My mother has old-fashioned preju- 
 dices and I think I shouldn't cause her pain. . . . I'm 
 practically an agnostic. I think it's the honest
 
 184 THE ROSE-COLOURED ROOM 
 
 attitude. I don't know if I've told you I was much 
 influenced by reading Darwin and Haeckel. . . ." 
 
 Cowie went on, trotting out all the old sayings of 
 the debating society, the maxims of brotherly love, 
 the gibes at Hell-fire. 
 
 " We don't go much to church," Drusilla said, half 
 listening. ..." We're Episcopalians, you know : but 
 / like to go into Catholic chapels." There was a pause. 
 
 " It doesn't matter," Cowie said eagerly. " Mother 
 wouldn't mind.' ' 
 
 " Mind ? When ? " Drusilla faltered. 
 
 " When I bring you to see her," Cowie said, with a 
 tender quizzicalness. A smile had flashed out on his 
 face, but he was blushing. " When am I to get 
 bringing you eh ? " 
 
 Drusilla felt his hands close warmly, insistently, 
 over hers. She drew hers away excitedly, and, 
 turning, walked quickly homewards. Her maiden- 
 hood was offended by Cowie's way of counting on her 
 consent ; and this feeling for the time overruled all 
 others, so that she was not conscious of surprise at the 
 suddenness of his speech, nor regret for his dis- 
 appointment. She understood now why girls did not 
 like him : there was a kind of violence and disrespect 
 in thus cutting short his time of wooing. She felt 
 that he thought of her as a woman to marry, not as 
 a girl to love : she felt aged, unhaloed, disrobed of 
 mystery by his action. 
 
 " Are you angry ? " Cowie gasped, bending towards 
 her, nervously smiling. 
 
 " No," Drusilla said without truth. She was angry, 
 but could not have explained her feeling. " Only 
 . . . that was a funny thing to say. Did your mother 
 ask you to bring me to see her ? "
 
 THE HAPPY WARRIOR 185 
 
 " No," Cowie said, smiling cunningly, in enjoyment 
 of her womanly wiles. " But I hope she will some 
 day. . . . She has an idea I'm going with some young 
 woman . . . and she knows I'm not the kind of fellow 
 to amuse myself." 
 
 " Going with ? " 
 
 " Well, I beg pardon. I suppose you don't like the 
 expression," Cowie said. "It's rather vulgar. You're 
 such a superior girl," he added admiringly. 
 
 Drusilla remembered the grace and self-possession 
 shown by the girls hi novels when they refused lovers. 
 She found herself nearly inarticulate : she tried to 
 explain and had a sense of struggling to move an 
 enormous weight. . . . Cowie's voice came to her 
 with a touching note in it saying : " It's ' No ' 
 then? It's 'No.' . . . You'd rather be left alone 
 just now ? " She felt cruel in baffling his eagerness 
 even with her conviction that his love was a poor 
 material thing. At the close entrance she clasped 
 his hand in both of hers : 
 
 " I'm sorry. ... I was a stupid wretch. . . . I'm 
 sorry." 
 
 " Thank you," Cowie said, with a wan smile. She 
 saw that he had no faith in the finality of her answer, 
 and she had a weak feeling of relief that his self- 
 confidence saved him from pain. Had she really 
 " gone with " him ? The thought was not tolerable. 
 She could not consult her mother as the happy girl 
 in fiction did. She felt again that sense of being made 
 old, of being sobered out of romance, as she realised 
 that he had taken it for granted that she understood. 
 He had a detestable way of calling her a " woman " : 
 it seemed insistent on sex. 
 
 A boy with an apple in his hand clattered down
 
 186 THE ROSE-COLOURED ROOM 
 
 the stair, and Brasilia gave him a neighbourly 
 greeting. 
 
 " Hallowe'en's coming," Cowie said. ..." Do you 
 dream on Hallowe'en, Miss Trathbye ? Good night." 
 
 The boy laughed archly, munching the apple. 
 
 IV 
 
 On All Saints' Eve the Trathbyes had a fire in the 
 sitting-room and a sugared bun for tea. Mrs. Trath- 
 bye cut the bun and Drusilla and Essie could not help 
 suspecting that she had felt the knife jolt on the paper- 
 wrapped ring in a certain slice and had deliberately 
 given it to Kathleen. The slight chill caused by this 
 piece of injustice was, however, melted away by the 
 unusual plenty and fun of the evening. Essie had had 
 a " rise," and had bought the cake and some fruit ; 
 and after tea the girls knelt by the fire and burned 
 pairs of nuts on the bars. The red glow shone in their 
 hair and glistened in their eyes ; and Aunt Caroline 
 who was ailing that day lay joking on the couch 
 near them. Mrs. Trathbye, preparing the plates for 
 fortune-telling, went to and fro, now to her work- 
 basket for a scrap of cloth red for a soldier, blue for 
 a sailor, black for a minister now to the kitchen for 
 salt or water. 
 
 Essie, stealthily smiling, set two filberts on the bar : 
 she was thinking of the cashier's friend who often 
 came for him at lunch-time, who had asked to be 
 introduced. ... A little giggle escaped Essie as 
 she placed the nuts : then she uttered an " Aw ! " 
 of disappointment as the larger one rolled into the 
 fire. 
 
 " It's not fair to try it over again," Kathleen said
 
 THE HAPPY WARRIOR 187 
 
 in her unpleasant way : but Brasilia, who was sure 
 of whom the great glossy nut was symbolic, declared 
 that the accident had happened before the rite had 
 really commenced. Essie tried again, but this time 
 the two nuts only smoked a little before sinking into 
 a sudden oiliness. 
 
 Brasilia would not use a nut to represent Michael 
 Quentin : it would have seemed sacrilegious to have 
 placed herself and Michael on the bar beside Essie 
 and the cashier's friend. It was so clear to her that 
 Michael and the cashier's friend could have nothing 
 in common. So she chose the names of men to whom 
 she was indifferent, avoiding, however, the name of 
 Alick Cowie. Kathleen, too, was making a mere 
 sport of the thing, and presently said that she would 
 try herself with Mr. Patullo. 
 
 ** If he catches fire he's sure to blaze," Mrs. Trathbye 
 said gaily. Patullo's drunkenness was now an open 
 scandal to his neighbours : for the poor man had 
 allowed himself to be seen twice in an unsteady state 
 on the stairs and was therefore reported to be unable 
 to mount them any night without assistance. On the 
 day following the second of these drunken fits, Patullo 
 had been ill, and Mrs. Trathbye and Aunt Caroline 
 had gone again and again to his door with neighbourly 
 offers of tea and coffee and hot water. Miss Morland 
 had come up in the afternoon ; and Brasilia thought 
 with a wondering disgust of how the three women 
 had contended in their ministries to Patullo. 
 
 " You'd better try him with Miss Morland ! " Aunt 
 Caroline said in her reckless way that had no faith and 
 practically no malice behind it, but was simply an 
 empty mind's echoing of the ideas of others. Aunt 
 Caroline, who was something of a courtier to her
 
 188 THE ROSE-COLOURED ROOM 
 
 sister-in-law, was pleased to win laughter from Mrs. 
 Trathbye. 
 
 Kathleen set the two nuts on the bar ; but in her 
 mirth her hand shook and they rolled alarmingly. 
 
 " That's not the way to put them, child ! " Mrs. 
 Trathbye said, kneeling on the rug. " There I'll 
 give you a wrinkle, as Miss Morland says . . . ." It 
 was one of Grace Morland's phrases, and Mrs. Trathbye 
 was intensely amused by her own rather poor imitation 
 of Grace's voice. 
 
 " Well, she can spare one ! " Kathleen said, and, 
 giggling, called every one's attention to the jest. 
 
 " Ah, you're very dry, Drusilla ! " Mrs. Trathbye 
 said to her unsmiling daughter. " Sitting there with 
 a solemn face and them all laughing round you." 
 
 Going to bed, Drusilla thought of this and wondered 
 if, a few months ago, she would have been amused at 
 the joke : she thought not, but, censuring herself, 
 could remember having laughed at sayings as vulgar 
 and unkindly stupid. She rejoiced now in feeling 
 that she had been left outside of the laughter. She 
 was glad of all the points of difference between her 
 and her relations, between her and all the people that 
 she knew. The reproaches of " odd," " cold," " im- 
 possible to understand," " so different from the rest," 
 had no longer power to burn her heart. If she had 
 been the same as the others, she could not have cared 
 for Michael Quentin. Had God made her and kept 
 her different for Michael ? She was glad that no one 
 had loved the beauty that had seemed so wasted 
 that no one had fondled her hah*, sweet-smelling, with 
 its wonderful crispness of lights and darks. Girls in 
 novels had mothers who stroked the shining locks and 
 wound them about their fingers and dressed them for
 
 THE HAPPY WARRIOR 189 
 
 the world's admiration. . . . But she was glad that 
 God had kept hers untouched like a precious thing in 
 a casket, awaiting the coming of the rightful inheritor 
 so that she might let it down and bathe Michael's face 
 in its bright virgin astonishment and wipe his eyes 
 with it and press it to his lips. . . . 
 
 She got into bed, and putting her stocking under 
 her pillow lay waiting to fall asleep and dream of 
 Michael. Essie was still undressing when Mrs. 
 Trathbye came into the room, wandering here and 
 there in a furtive, tentative fashion ; taking a pin 
 from the cushion on the dressing-table, asking if the 
 windows were not too wide open. 
 
 " Aren't you going to bed, mother ? " Essie asked, 
 busy with her stocking. ..." Dillie has hers in : she 
 can't speak to say good night." 
 
 Essie began to murmur the incantation proper to 
 the Hallowe'en custom of " dreaming on " one's 
 stocking ; and suddenly Mrs. Trathbye came close to 
 the bed : she spoke like one whose uneasiness pricks 
 her into speech of which she is ashamed. 
 
 " Dillie ... I hope now you aren't foolish enough 
 to be thinking Michael Quentin has any matrimonial 
 intentions. . . . Sure you aren't ? ... It would be 
 too ridiculous to take such an idea into your head. 
 . . . Why, he paid less attention to you than to any 
 one of them ! " 
 
 The Holy Eve superstition gave Drusilla an excuse 
 for keeping silence : she turned her head so that the 
 glowing hair fell over her ear and cheek. Mrs. 
 Trathbye's voice, pleading insanely to be reassured, 
 stabbed her with contempt. " Don't tell me that 
 Michael Quentin cares for you," her mother seemed to 
 be begging. " Don't tell me that, for I couldn't bear
 
 190 THE ROSE-COLOURED ROOM 
 
 to hear it." The brilliance of the match, the ad- 
 vantages that would accrue from it to the whole 
 family, were lost sight of in the dread of the intolerable 
 pain of seeing Drusilla beloved, dazzling, triumphant. 
 . . . Mrs. Trathbye had been driven into speech by 
 her daughter's reserve : the mother had been waiting 
 for Michael's name so that she might soothe her 
 jealousy with the discovery that her fears were un- 
 founded : her crouching attitude as she bent over the 
 bed, her eyes that pretended to smile, seemed to ask 
 for mercy. 
 
 Drusilla suddenly sat up, linking her arms about her 
 mother's neck : but Mrs. Trathbye tore herself from 
 the clasp and hurried from the room. 
 
 Essie stood for a minute in puzzlement ; then, with 
 a complete egotism, she turned out the gas, put her 
 stocking under her pillow, and got into bed. 
 
 Michael Quentin was at The Corner House on All 
 Saints' Eve ; and he had brought down old Patullo 
 to spend a few days with him. Michael hoped that 
 the pure air, the quietude, and, especially, the colour- 
 scheme of the house, would have beneficial effects on 
 Patullo. . . . 
 
 There was no doubt that the poor man was drinking 
 more than ever or at least with less concealment. 
 Racie Moore had spoken to Michael of the folly of 
 giving Patullo money for drink. It was base of 
 Racie to say that it was not safe even to give 
 Patullo money for flowers for his little boy's grave : 
 the suspicion seemed to Michael worthy of a fiend, 
 and he said so. 
 
 " Well, can't you give the money to Miss Morland ?" 
 Racie said. " She'll take the flowers out she often
 
 THE HAPPY WARRIOR 191 
 
 goes. It will be safer so. ... She's the kind of 
 person to enjoy visiting graves." 
 
 Michael, yearning for the soul of Patullo, made an 
 effort to follow this advice. He spoke openly to 
 Patullo, explaining that he did not despise him, that 
 he believed that to resist the alcohol crave was an 
 heroic destiny. And, under the soothing, toning 
 influence of Michael's respect (or perhaps of the colour- 
 scheme of The Corner House) Patullo developed a 
 temporary energy of resistance. He was one of the 
 most sympathetic admirers that The Corner House had 
 ever had : the rooms certainly seemed bare to him : 
 but he acquiesced in Michael's arguments of the ex- 
 pression of a single mood, of pure lines and hues, of 
 the undisturbed eye and heart. Against the unsullied 
 walls Patullo's face showed horribly discoloured and 
 demoralised : but before the end of the third day 
 Michael observed a distinct change in him. His nose 
 was not so red ; the whites of his eyes cleared : 
 something of the bowed weariness went from his walk. 
 He declared that Michael's vegetarian diet was 
 delightful : it had made him a little headachy at first, 
 he believed, but that feeling had soon passed. He 
 contented himself, with apparently not much difficulty, 
 with the light wines that Michael drank, but laugh- 
 ingly confessed that he could not cultivate a taste for 
 fruit. Michael was disappointed by this, but having 
 read much of the fruit cure for alcoholism continued 
 to tempt Patullo, even in his bedroom, with still-life 
 groups of purple grapes, pears, and peaches. They 
 had long, enjoyable talks on the food question, and 
 Patullo, with his air of intelligent courtesy, showed a 
 surprised interest in Michael's statement that right 
 dieting was the basis of right living. . . . Michael
 
 192 THE ROSE-COLOURED ROOM 
 
 ventured to read aloud Tolstoi's " First Step " 
 and, as he had expected, was overmastered by his 
 emotions. 
 
 " Your loss of self-control does you credit, Mr. 
 Quentin," Patullo said, wiping his spectacles and 
 coughing. 
 
 It pleased Michael to consider Patullo as a means by 
 which he could make himself a little more worthy of 
 Drusilla ; his first adventure in the long series of 
 purifying rescues of the wronged helpless, and sanctify- 
 ing battles with stupidity and sin. For this reason 
 alone Patullo would have become dear to the young 
 man : but, even when not considered as an instrument, 
 Patullo had attributes which moved to compassion, 
 thence to liking. After a few long talks with him 
 it was possible for Michael to reconstruct him as a 
 young man, devout yet ardently classic, his memory 
 filled with long passages of Greek and Latin, his heart 
 with dreams of fair columns, black against saffron 
 sunsets, and masses of olive, grey in opalescent 
 mornings. " I always had an ambition to go to Italy 
 and to Greece," Patullo said, with his squeamish 
 smile. " Nothing could be more educative than the 
 old pagan countries seen with Christian eyes." 
 
 " Oh, I wish I'd been educated ! " Michael groaned. 
 " I wish I'd been taught some one fine thing 
 thoroughly, so that I might carry it about with me all 
 my life ! . . ." 
 
 Patullo looked at him emotionally ; his self-respect 
 going up with a leap at the realisation that he was 
 being envied by Michael Quentin. 
 
 " Mr. Quentin you hegh, hegh, hegh ! you do 
 carry something fine about with you, I think, if you'll 
 allow me to say so. ... As for the Greek and Latin,
 
 THE HAPPY WARRIOR 193 
 
 why shouldn't you read with me ? I've known men 
 who've begun at nearly twice your age." 
 
 Michael looked up, swaying about and blushing. 
 
 " As a friend," Patullo added firmly. 
 
 " Thank you," Michael said. 
 
 They read together ; and suddenly one night there 
 flashed into Michael's mind a scheme by which he 
 might insure the tutor against the return of his craving. 
 The plan was so simple, it rushed forth in such com- 
 pleteness, that Michael felt sure that it must have been 
 suggested to him by some friend " on the other side " 
 probably by Rollo himself. To drive the demon 
 out of Patullo's life, it was only necessary to surround 
 him with pure hopes and interests. He would ask 
 Patullo to come with him to Italy and Greece, to spend 
 a few months in study and in wandering in the fair 
 lands of his dreams. Michael's ignorance, his depen- 
 dence on Patullo, would develop just the right sense of 
 importance in this man whom the world had baffled 
 and despised. 
 
 It would not be an easy thing to do. Michael's 
 heart quailed at the idea of months to be passed 
 without seeing or hearing from Drusilla : but the very 
 difficulty of the deed made it seem the more knightly, 
 the more saintly, the more acceptable to his princess 
 and to God. ... It was a slight thing : it was made 
 significant only by the spirit in which it was done : 
 the offering to his love of this poor wronged bemired 
 soul, made clean and strong, was only a confession of 
 his sense of the vileness of his own soul. ... It was 
 only the wiping of his feet before he dared enter the 
 temple. 
 
 Since his meeting with Drusilla, Michael had spent 
 a great deal of his time in the white studio. He 
 
 N
 
 194 THE ROSE-COLOURED ROOM 
 
 prayed there, sometimes after many hours of fasting, 
 and he believed that the moral strength thus acquired 
 was giving him power to hold the soul of Thomas 
 Patullo. The idea of taking Patullo away came he 
 could not doubt as a response to those long, rap- 
 turous prayers when his spirit seemed to come near 
 to peeping over the physical barrier. " Do this 
 thing," the powers on the other side seemed to say. 
 " You want to do something do this first." There 
 was exultation in the thought of the pain that it 
 would cause him to go away, silent, while their love 
 was in its misty dawning phase of chance meetings 
 and sudden partings. . . . Drusilla would understand. 
 
 " He's clean daft," Mattie the cook said on All 
 Saints' Eve as Michael went up the stair to the white 
 studio. Mattie spoke to the new parlour-maid and 
 the new housemaid ; for Muriel and Helen had left, 
 asserting that they were " bored stiff " by The Corner 
 House and the " goings-on " of its owner. Tosh, the 
 serious chauffeur, had done nothing to lighten their lot. 
 
 " He's up a pole," Mattie said, referring to Michael. 
 " Poor lad, I declare I sometimes feel that sorry for 
 him it vexes me to think of him. Jim " the 
 second-gardener " Jim says to me, ' My word, 
 Mattie,' he says, ' if I'd Mr. Quentin's money, I'd have 
 a rare time with it.' So'd I, wouldn't you ? I 
 declare maybe it isn't a right thing to say when it's 
 not us has the disposing of things, but I sometimes 
 can't help thinking money's always given to the wrong 
 sort of folks, don't you ? Always goes to folks that 
 don't seem to know what to do with theirselfs. He 
 chooses his companions very badly, I think, don't you ? 
 My, you'd expect him to know nothing but ladies an' 
 gentlemen but they won't come to his house, maybe.
 
 THE HAPPY WARRIOR 195 
 
 Just look at this last one Old Bottlenose ! My, if 
 you was to pour hot water on his clothes you'd get a 
 barrel of whisky as strong as anybody 'ud want it." 
 Mattie laughed at the applausive glee of the others, 
 as arm-in-arm they went down the drive to the head 
 gardener's lodge at the western gate. Turning, she 
 looked back at The Corner House, blue-white and 
 golden-eyed in a violet night of frost-whipped air and 
 a deep dazzle of stars. The head gardener's cottage 
 was aglow and loud with the merry-making of diving 
 for apples and burning of mated nuts. " My, girls, 
 I couldn't bite an apple and look in the glass, could 
 you ? " Mattie said. " I'd drop down dead." She 
 added, with an apparent irrelevance but a real linking 
 of occult ideas : " There's a light in his stoodio, of 
 course. There's nothing in that room." 
 
 The others acclaimed and questioned. 
 
 " Well, I looked in once over his shoulder an' I saw 
 nothing," Mattie said, " except a lot of old uncanny 
 books and a jug of roses." 
 
 "That'll be for the dead young lady," the new 
 housemaid said pitifully. ..." I think he's awful 
 nice. He's awful kind to poor folks. I think he's a 
 real good Christian." 
 
 " No : he's a theasaphist," Mattie said. " At least 
 I think so," she modified in charity. 
 
 Michael had remained in the studio till his plan was 
 a finished structure, resolute in every detail. The 
 struggle had been harder than his first diffused feeling 
 of exaltation had allowed him to expect : there were 
 fears and anguishes in the thought of so many 
 material miles between him and Drusilla : his senses 
 anticipated the hunger of months without the touch 
 of her, the sight of her, the sound of her childish
 
 196 THE ROSE-COLOURED ROOM 
 
 expectant voice, the scent of her hair. ... It was not 
 till one o'clock that Michael rose from his knees, 
 rather light-headed but ecstatic, and, turning out the 
 stove and the lights, stood for a minute staring up at 
 the blue-black slopes of the glass roof spattered with 
 white stars. The scent of roses was strong in his 
 nostrils as he left the room and went downstairs, his 
 mind full of the image of a wan, happy knight, in 
 early morning, stealing from a chapel, his vow taken 
 and his vigil over. 
 
 Michael slept in the blue room, and the indigo bath- 
 room lay between him and the violet guest-chamber 
 in which Patullo was. Having bathed, Michael lay 
 down on his bed, which, like all the other beds in The 
 Corner House, was a mere stretcher. He found that 
 he could not sleep : his brain, excited by his long 
 fast and striving, was wrought up to a dancing activity : 
 images trooped through it, vividly coloured, of an 
 intense luminosity, solidly shaped : the scent of roses 
 seemed to be constantly with him. The desire to see 
 Drusilla became intolerable : he stretched out his 
 arms, fancying her, rose-cheeked in the ruddy showers 
 of her hah*. . . . 
 
 He sat up, flinging aside the blue silken counterpane. 
 A big round moon was riding now in the sky, and he 
 could see the outlines of the room. There was a 
 mirror inset in the wall at right angles to the bed, and 
 Michael, remembering that it was All Saints' Eve, 
 gazed into it, fixing all the power of his will on the 
 thought of Drusilla. She would know where she lay 
 sleeping far away, white-clad with rosy cheeks and 
 round limbs and ruddy hair : she would look, re- 
 assuring, from the glass. . . . 
 
 As Michael leaned forward, fervently watching, he
 
 THE HAPPY WARRIOR 197 
 
 saw the depths of the dark glass lighten and quiver ; 
 and he saw a face look out. 
 
 Not Drusilla's face, round-cheeked and richly 
 coloured, melting into the splendour of her hair. 
 But the face of Rollo, sharp and wistful and kingly, 
 as it had shown in its coffin. . . . 
 
 Michael got out of bed. The thing had been only a 
 delusion, due to light-headedness brought on by 
 hunger and want of sleep and strain. . . . 
 
 " Mr. Patullo ! " Michael called, subduedly. There 
 was no reply, and, rising, he crossed the indigo bath- 
 room and set open the door of the violet chamber. 
 The moonlight showed him the beautiful room, the 
 rosy heliotrope of the walls, the long mauve curtains 
 embroidered in greens and blues, the emerald and 
 amethyst colourings of the tiles, the Michaelmas 
 daisies in a tall blue-green jar, the purple grapes and 
 faint shape of a siphon on a table by the bedside ; 
 and on the bed, under white draperies and a quilt of 
 purple silk, old Patullo lying asleep. His head was in 
 shadow, its ugliness only guessable : but he breathed 
 gutteringly, not as if the air flooding in at the window 
 were a holy thing. 
 
 " Mr. Patullo " 
 
 Patullo started with a snapped breath that sounded 
 like " Cork ! " opened idiotic eyes. 
 
 " Excuse me, Mr. Patullo I'm fearfully restless 
 I simply can't sleep. Would you mind leaving your 
 door open and I'll leave mine open too ? " 
 
 " Why, of course. To be sure. Certainly, Mr. 
 Quentin." 
 
 Patullo's words were formal ; but there was hi his 
 manner something kind, protective, almost familiar 
 and fatherly.
 
 198 THE ROSE-COLOURED ROOM 
 
 Michael came up to town the next day and sent 
 Racie a wire asking him to come to Mrs. Wylie's. 
 
 " Well, I must say you look rather ..." Racie 
 said as he came into the maroon-coloured, leather- 
 furnished room. 
 
 "Rather what?" Michael asked acidly. "Sit 
 down have this one." 
 
 Racie sat in the basket-chair and Michael in the 
 arm-chair opposite to him. There was an attractive 
 fire and Racie smoked, looking into it. 
 
 " I suppose you'll be able to manage the meetings 
 of the Eire yourself for the next few months ? " 
 Michael said. " Not the Mission, of course : I'll 
 speak to Miss Morland about that." 
 
 " There mayn't be any to manage," Racie suggested. 
 
 " As usual : prepared for the worst," Michael 
 said. 
 
 " There might be worse than having no meetings," 
 Racie said. He waited for Michael to ask : " How ? " 
 then added : " For example, there might be meetings." 
 
 Michael uttered a short laugh. 
 
 " There are going to be meetings," he said. " And, 
 when I come back in the spring, we're going to have 
 some prominent men big meetings in public halls 
 and all that." 
 
 " Oh ! " Racie said. " Well, of course . . . with 
 five thousand I suppose . . ." 
 
 "We'll sell tickets," Michael said. "There's no 
 earthly reason why it shouldn't pay. I'm getting 
 tired of that tone of yours." 
 
 Racie's judgment of the result of the vow and the 
 vigil was merely that Michael was in a bad temper.
 
 THE HAPPY WARRIOR 199 
 
 Worrying about that girl, no doubt. As if there were 
 any need to worry ! 
 
 " I want to tell you," Michael said, tickling Mrs. 
 Wylie's cat on the rug. " I'm going away for a 
 holiday with Patullo. He's told me several times 
 he used to be keen to go to Rome and Athens and 
 Florence and Venice, too, and the rest. He's agreed 
 to come with me." 
 
 Racie was looking straight, with brightening eyes, 
 at his friend. Michael's resolve to leave the country 
 " for a few months " as he had hinted in speaking of 
 the Eire Club could mean only that he was indifferent 
 to Drusilla. For it was out of the question that he 
 had proposed to the girl and been refused. No widow 
 would have allowed that. 
 
 Racie concealed his satisfaction. Michael Quentin 
 in this perverse mood might be blown in any direction 
 by careless words. 
 
 " I think it may help Patullo," Michael said flushing. 
 " You'll laugh at that ? " 
 
 " No," Racie replied gravely. ..." I'll see to the 
 Eire. I'll do anything you like." He added quickly, 
 afraid that he had shown a too great complacence : 
 " I suppose you're feeling consumedly grateful to 
 Patullo ? " 
 
 "Yes," Michael flashed out. "Patullo behaved 
 like a gentleman. It takes a gentleman to accept 
 things. . . . Never mind. There's Warde's paper on 
 J. M. Synge for next meeting ; and Mrs. Topping's 
 little play's to be read the evening after that. . . ." 
 Michael moved to the table and began to take from 
 his pockets and spread out crushed wads of papers, 
 dotted with notes. 
 
 " I say," Racie said, on his knees beside him. . . .
 
 200 THE ROSE-COLOURED ROOM 
 
 " There's the treasurer's business, Mick. Patullo'll 
 need to hand over the accounts to whoever takes 
 it on. . . ." 
 
 There was a pause. Blood surged up into Michael's 
 tired face so that its clearness of colour was for the 
 minute restored. Racie was looking away. 
 
 " I don't want Patullo to be bothered about accounts 
 just now," Michael said shufflingly. " You can just 
 go on with the money affairs as if you were beginning 
 afresh. I'd rather you didn't ask Patullo for the 
 books or anything just now. You see I want his mind 
 to get filled with fresh ideas, you know." 
 
 " All right," Racie said. 
 
 " I'll leave some money for the club in case there's 
 anything . . . unpaid," Michael said. 
 
 " All right. Blessed thing money cures all ills 
 and covers up all scandals," Racie said with a dry 
 resentment. 
 
 " I don't know what you're talking about," Michael 
 said angrily. 
 
 Miss Morland, consulted about the Mission, showed 
 her usual enthusiastic loyalty. " Isn't it extra- 
 ordinary how those boys, Mick Quentin and Racie 
 Moore, depend on me ? " she said to Drusilla. " I'm 
 amused by it, Dillie : it's so remarkable." She went 
 a score of times to Mrs. Wylie's with absurd little 
 messages, of an inflated importance. She bustled to 
 and from old Patullo's flat, Patullo having returned to 
 town to set his affairs in order before his journey. 
 Under Miss Morland's hunger for eminence there 
 shone something grateful and glad. 
 
 Drusilla had not believed Miss Morland's statement 
 that Michael was going away with Patullo. Grace 
 was always making mistakes : everything she did and
 
 THE HAPPY WARRIOR 201 
 
 said was characterised by that same impudent glib 
 slackness. It was not till Drusilla met Patullo on the 
 stairs that she really knew that Michael was going. 
 
 It was the Trathbyes' washing-day and Aunt Caro- 
 line was on the green, troubling the washerwoman. 
 The clothes, flapping furiously on the swaying lines, 
 were drying quickly in the wind ; and Mrs. Trathbye 
 and Drusilla were carrying a basketful indoors when 
 Patullo met them. 
 
 Drusilla, wind-blown, in an old blouse and skirt, 
 would have passed Patullo with a smile : but she felt 
 her mother jerk the handle of the basket, and they 
 set it down. It was strange how Patullo's masculinity 
 was held to atone for his meanness in that matter of 
 the two shillings and his reported perpetual inebriety 
 on the stairs. 
 
 " Well . . . have you been writing anything, Miss 
 Trathbye ? " she heard Patullo say. 
 
 " I thought of trying it again ... I commenced 
 one or two things," she murmured, in fear of her 
 mother's annoyance at Patullo turning his attention 
 to her. 
 
 " Ah, she hasn't any taste for anything of that sort," 
 Mrs. Trathbye said ; and began to tell how Kathleen 
 was going in for a Joy Wheel Competition in one of 
 the weeklies. Patullo inclined his head, saying, " Yes, 
 yes," and forcing little " hegh-hegh's " of laughter at 
 Mrs. Trathbye's confused account of how you cut out 
 the wheel in three circles, and, having mounted these 
 on cardboard, swung the outermost circle round till 
 the right object was opposite to the right person, and 
 the number in the innermost circle showed the day 
 on which the thing happened. 
 
 " Very ingenious," Patullo said with his piteous
 
 202 THE ROSE-COLOURED ROOM 
 
 smile, which ran along the grief-worn channels in his 
 face. " I hope Miss Kathleen will be successful. . . . 
 Did you hear I was going away, Miss Trathbye ? " 
 
 Drusilla had impatiently caught the handle of the 
 basket : she clutched it more tightly. 
 
 " Yes. Miss Morland told me you were thinking 
 of it." 
 
 " It's settled," Patullo said. " I am going to act 
 as travelling companion to Mr. Quentin : he is very 
 keen to see Rome and Greece and to rub up his 
 acquaintanceship with art and literature. We are 
 leaving on the seventeenth." 
 
 " It ought to be lovely," Drusilla said. Mrs. 
 Trathbye silently lifted the other handle of the basket 
 and they went into the house. 
 
 Drusilla was intolerably aware of her mother 
 regarding her ruthfully ; and several times during the 
 day Mrs. Trathbye spoke to her daughter in the tender 
 chaffing tone that one uses to a hurt child who, 
 embraced, is in danger of breaking down. 
 
 " She'd be good to me always if I were disgraced," 
 Drusilla thought in anger, " or if something happened 
 to make me ugly." 
 
 But she was glad that nothing had happened. As 
 she rose up out of her first prostration, she remem- 
 bered that nearly two weeks lay between her and the 
 seventeenth of November, and that there would be a 
 meeting of the Eire Club next Thursday. She would 
 see Michael then unless, indeed, he came to the house 
 before then. She exulted, defiant, in the thought 
 that only Michael truly loved her beauty ; and he 
 loved it because he saw through it to the eternal soul 
 of which it was the symbol. This was a thing that 
 she felt rather than thought : for her thoughts were
 
 THE HAPPY WARRIOR 203 
 
 seldom definite forms in the colour and light of her 
 emotions. 
 
 " You aren't thinking of going to the club to- 
 night ? " Mrs. Trathbye said suddenly on Thursday 
 afternoon. She had noticed that, every day of late, 
 Drusilla had dressed herself very carefully, putting 
 on her best embroidered collars and massing her hair 
 low on her neck, with a big brown bow in it. The 
 style made her look very young much younger 
 than Essie, incomparably younger than the solid 
 Kathleen. 
 
 ' Yes, I'm going," Drusilla said with her usual 
 gentleness of speech, but with a note of resistant 
 cheerfulness. 
 
 Mrs. Trathbye dropped her sewing, rose, and walked 
 agitatedly to and fro. They were alone in the kitchen, 
 Aunt Caroline having gone to the post-office. Drusilla 
 was crocheting lace with which, threaded with rib- 
 bons, she ornamented all her underclothing. It had 
 been her habit for years ; but the sight of her thus 
 employed was suddenly suggestive to her mother. 
 Drusilla was not despairing of Michael Quentin : had 
 she some secret support other than that dreadful 
 confidence of beautiful women in their youth ? . . . 
 Mrs. Trathbye's sick mind could not bear her daugh- 
 ter's silence : she must speak in spite of her own 
 shame. After all, she had a right to speak : she 
 buttressed herself behind her motherly experience. 
 
 " Dillie, I don't think you'll be wise to go " she 
 spoke pityingly, but the fear that her daughter's 
 happiness might come was audible, quivering in her 
 voice. ..." Will Michael Quentin be there ? " 
 
 " I suppose so," Drusilla said, still with that air of 
 cheerful surprise. She held up her lace, gazing at its
 
 204 THE ROSE-COLOURED ROOM 
 
 white stars and loops ; then bent to pick up Mrs. 
 Trathbye's sewing. 
 
 " Never mind," Mrs. Trathbye said irritably. 
 Dillie was the only one of the girls who showed these 
 deferences. " I can bend as well as you," Mrs. 
 Trathbye said sorely, looking at the brown bow, the 
 melting of hair into the white neck, the beautiful 
 rosy cheek. 
 
 Drusilla laughed. " Of course you can, mother." 
 She began to sing : " * I can bend as well as you, sir, 
 as you, sir, as you, sir. I can bend as well as you, sir, 
 ransy- tansy-ting.' Miss Morland gives us that at 
 gymnastics," she said ; for she had long ago confessed 
 that she attended Grace's class and the Trathbye 
 family had resigned themselves to it. 
 
 It seemed to Mrs. Trathbye that the girl's mirth 
 must be genuine : for the fever in her own blood 
 prevented her from detecting the feverish note. She 
 felt a savage need to struggle against her daughter's 
 growing self-assertiveness : a year ago Drusilla would 
 not have ventured to sparkle and sing in her mother's 
 presence. Mrs. Trathbye had always snubbed such 
 conscious vivacities as " foolish " or " forward " or 
 " not nice." 
 
 " Dillie ... I think I ought to speak to you about 
 this : you know I've always been very proud of my 
 girls' behaviour. I've always prided myself on no 
 daughter of mine ever doing anything common. . . . 
 There's no worse mistake than for a young girl to let 
 a man think she cares for him. Men make fun of 
 girls who do things like that." Mrs. Trathbye's voice 
 was throaty with swelling excitement. " I didn't 
 think I'd ever need to be afraid of a daughter of mine 
 laying herself open to remark. . . . You needn't be
 
 THE HAPPY WARRIOR 205 
 
 trying to look innocent at me you know what I mean. 
 ... If you let Michael Quentin see that you're 
 disappointed at him going away, I'll never be able to 
 feel anything but ashamed of you again." 
 
 " Why should I be disappointed ? " Drusilla said. 
 
 " Ah . . . you know you're disappointed. I be- 
 lieve you took it into your head he'd serious inten- 
 tions." Mrs. Trathbye laughed horribly. " God for- 
 give you, you're so vain you think it about every 
 man that comes near you. . . and it's not the men 
 that want you at all, it's you that want them. It 
 isn't nice it isn't a way any nice-minded girl would 
 talk and think. . . ." 
 
 " Talk ? " Drusilla said, scornful. " When did / 
 ever talk about men ? " 
 
 " That's not a way to speak to your mother," Mrs. 
 Trathbye said. " You're the only one of them that 
 would speak to me in such a tone. . . . You don't set 
 a very good example to your sisters in any way, 
 conduct or anything else and you so much the 
 eldest." It was one of her trivialities, in anger, to 
 exaggerate Drusilla's age ; and she did this, with an 
 irritating maternal undeniableness, in the presence of 
 strangers. 
 
 Aunt Caroline's latch-key gurgled in the lock and 
 Mrs. Trathbye vented her feelings in an outburst of 
 weeping so that her sister-in-law might find her 
 crying. Drusilla, leaving the room, knew just how 
 Mrs. Trathbye, questioned, would say faintly : " Oh, 
 
 it's Dillie " leaning her head on one side, gasping, 
 
 with mournful streaming face. 
 
 Drusilla was burning and trembling with the sense 
 of her outraged maidenhood. . . . Her mother her 
 mother I Girls went to their mothers to whisper things
 
 206 THE ROSE-COLOURED ROOM 
 
 too fine for utterance. . . . She could not think of 
 Mrs. Trathbye as other than the victim of a mysterious 
 disease : yet she was beginning to fear her as a 
 creature not blameable, but none the less infectious, 
 repellent, and to be avoided. Drusilla's heart turned 
 from the sight of this madness of envy : that it was 
 the result of starved instincts and unused energies 
 made it none the less shameful and detestable. She 
 remembered wincingly her mother's previous attacks : 
 she thought she understood now the terrible meaning- 
 less words that had frightened her almost beyond 
 sanity when her mother had taken her away from the 
 art shop. She understood why she had been suddenly 
 removed from school, from the master who made a 
 favourite of her, putting his arm about her waist and 
 stroking her hair. She remembered an extraordinary 
 passion of rebukes one time in the boarding-house 
 in Lamb Street, when a grey-moustached man had 
 lifted the little girl on to his knee and she had told that 
 he had done it. ... She always used to tell things 
 that was how she was accused of being secretive. 
 Even now she had to remind herself to keep silence. 
 . . . Essie could do it quite easily ; she had never let 
 her mother know that the cashier had a friend. 
 
 In novels, girls' mothers understood and helped 
 them. In a novel, her mother would have asked 
 Michael Quentin to the house would have been 
 jubilant in her joy, proud of the material merits of 
 such a marriage. The German Socialist himself saw 
 the usefulness of co-operation and solidarity : his 
 description of the mad welter of competitive trade 
 was only a magnified account of the continual little 
 struggles at the Trathbyes' flat. 
 
 It was a struggle between her and her mother : it
 
 THE HAPPY WARRIOR 207 
 
 had begun when her lips had drunk in day by day 
 something of her mother's life and joy, her strength 
 and beauty. 
 
 VI 
 
 At the Eire Club Drusilla and Michael said good-bye. 
 
 " May I write to you ? " Michael said, suddenly 
 looking into her eyes. 
 
 " Yes," Drusilla said happily. It seemed to him 
 that she understood and, indeed, for the moment 
 she did. 
 
 When she got home she went to say good night to 
 her mother, and told her that Michael had asked if 
 he might write. Essie would have kept silence : but 
 Drusilla was warmly anxious to do right. She was 
 full of happy hopes. Four months would pass quickly 
 when she had Michael's letters lying near her heart. 
 
 Mrs. Trathbye tried not to ask to see the first letter ; 
 but her resolution broke down and she said to her 
 daughter, with a brutal assumption of authority : 
 
 " Show me that letter." 
 
 Drusilla showed it. It comforted Mrs. Trathbye 
 that the letter could be truly described as being one 
 that anybody might have written. Drusilla was 
 faintly saddened by it : she read it over and over 
 again, trying to breathe warmth into it. She did not 
 wear it over her heart, but resolved to keep that 
 resting-place for one more familiar and fond. 
 
 Other letters followed. Michael sent them at 
 respectful intervals : he wrote them reverently. 
 Often he changed phrases which (he feared) might 
 startle her maidenhood out of its sweet dreaming- time, 
 in a misty atmosphere suffused with the light of love. 
 . . . The poor fellow was not an easy letter-writer ;
 
 208 THE ROSE-COLOURED ROOM 
 
 and always behind his guarded words there was his 
 conviction that her soul would awake and understand. 
 She lay in her sleep sentinelled by roses : she must be 
 awakened only by the touch of lips that had prayed 
 themselves into a purity to equal hers. He would 
 expel everything vile and presumptuous from his acts 
 and words and thoughts : his life would be all an 
 oblation of faith in God, of courtesy to his fellows. 
 Often he checked the impulse to kiss the paper where 
 her name was signed. 
 
 " Ah, I don't see any sense in keeping up the cor- 
 respondence," Mrs. Trathbye said. " It's foolish. 
 . . . Just so that people may think you have an 
 admirer." 
 
 " Who ? The postman, Mother ? " Drusilla said, 
 with her pretty tolerant laugh. But her heart had 
 sunk ; it sank a little lower at each of these comments, 
 vulgarising and doubt-creating. The magnetism of 
 Michael's presence was removed : the Eire Club had 
 become a nightmare of half-filled benches and clat- 
 tering voices : it seemed to her that Miss Morland 
 looked gibingly at her when Michael was mentioned ; 
 and at home the materialities of life, the four narrow 
 walls and the meagre interests they enclosed, pressed 
 ever more closely on her heart. At the club and at 
 home Alexander Cowie bulked ever more largely in 
 her life, was ever more importunate and more familiar, 
 and oddly more endurable. 
 
 It was a hard winter for the Trathbyes. Poor John, 
 in debt, wrote at Christmas-time, asking them to lend 
 him as much money as they could scrape together. 
 They had been expecting John on a visit, and this 
 substitute produced a miserable dullness. Mrs. 
 Trathbye refused to buy any cakes or to accept any
 
 THE HAPPY WARRIOR 209 
 
 presents. They had already bought materials for a 
 plum -pudding, so they made one, but as it left the 
 cloth it seemed to have a funereal blackness instead 
 of the usual air of jollity, and it split into three under 
 the hands of Aunt Caroline, who burst into loud sobs. 
 The morning post had brought Drusilla a Christmas 
 greeting from Michael and a slender volume of Francis 
 Thompson : she had hardly dared to show it, it 
 seemed such a bright thing in the general gloom. . . . 
 And another postman rang, presenting a cake for 
 Mrs. Trathbye and a box of gloves for Drusilla. 
 Alexander Cowie's card lay in each box. 
 
 " Ten times the price of anything you ever got from 
 Michael Quentin," Mrs. Trathbye said, laughing, 
 wiled into cheerfulness by the complimentary cake. 
 The words and the look that went with them remained 
 with Drusilla. It was amazing to her that her mother 
 should be able to think of Cowie seriously as a suitor : 
 it made her angry. The expression fleeting across 
 Mrs. Trathbye's eyes confessed : " I spoiled your 
 chance with Michael Quentin I'm still trying to 
 spoil it. I can't help it, I feel sorry and I'm offering 
 you Alick Cowie as indemnity." 
 
 " He'd no right to send me these," Drusilla said, 
 flushed. " Mother, should I send them back ? " 
 
 Mrs. Trathbye made a mocking face. 
 
 " Little Miss Propriety ! " she simpered. " If 
 you're too proud to wear them yourself give them to 
 Kathleen." 
 
 It was bewildering. But Drusilla divined that the 
 first sign on her part of favouring Cowie would be 
 the signal for her mother's opposition. Cowie came 
 up the next day, offering tickets for a dance ; and she 
 thanked him gently for the gloves but refused to 
 
 o
 
 210 THE ROSE-COLOURED ROOM 
 
 accept any other gift from him or to accompany him 
 to the dance. 
 
 " Of course we don't go to dances with young men ! " 
 she said, laughing. 
 
 Cowie looked at her admiringly. It was desolating 
 to realise that she had only made him esteem her the 
 more. She was such a " ladylike girl." 
 
 '' When are you going to give me the right to take 
 you to dances ? " Cowie said, after he had arranged 
 to take " wee Aggie " instead. 
 
 " I can't ever do that, Mr. Cowie," Drusilla said very 
 earnestly. But Cowie looked at her with a laugh in 
 those strange frivolous eyes of his and went away 
 unbelieving. 
 
 It was abominable to have to go about, with Essie 
 and Kathleen, or with the neighbour's daughter, Amy 
 Cartwright, and to gaze at the charming things in the 
 shop-windows and not have a penny to buy anything. 
 Essie expressed herself " fed up " with the whole 
 thing : she was never again going to try to save money, 
 for it meant nothing but denying herself things that 
 she wanted so that her mother might take the money 
 and give it to John. 
 
 " To pay his bills at the inn and his losses at cards ! " 
 Essie said. Aunt Caroline and Mrs. Trathbye had 
 said a great deal about warm clothing for the winter. 
 The state of John's socks had been dwelt upon as 
 specially lamentable : yet it seemed unlikely that he 
 should want forty pounds for socks. . . . 
 
 Hearing this outburst of Essie's, as they stood in 
 front of a charming shop-window in Sauchiehall 
 Street, Drusilla marvelled anew at her sister's dis- 
 cretion. Essie seemed to know how to avoid direct 
 discussion with her mother and aunt : her point of
 
 THE %HAPPY WARRIOR 211 
 
 view must be much as theirs except in this matter 
 of John. It was not possible to make Essie speak of 
 a thing like a love-affair. Up till a few months ago, 
 she had shown a phlegmatic version of her mother's 
 dislike to speech on the subject. Now, Drusilla 
 wondered glancing at her sister's dull face what 
 thoughts the shop-windows were stirring in her heart. 
 
 " It's funny the way women feel about men," 
 Drusilla said. " I believe mother and Aunt Carlie 
 would sacrifice anything to John just because he's a 
 man." 
 
 Essie's face assumed its forbidding look of caution, 
 and she passed on without replying. The next win- 
 dow was full of rose-coloured silks and ribbons. 
 
 "Aren't they lovely?" Drusilla sighed. "I'd 
 like to have twenty pounds of my own and to buy and 
 buy She was suddenly aware that Essie had 
 
 moved so that the mirror at the back of the window 
 might not reflect them side by side. And with her 
 consciousness of this Drusilla's heart contracted with 
 a painful sense of loneliness : she wanted to feel in 
 sympathy with Essie. 
 
 " You're not likely either to get or to make twenty 
 pounds," Essie said morosely, and they went home 
 empty-handed. Drusilla in her bedroom opened her 
 glove-box and gazed at the grey kids, so soft and 
 sweetly scented. Cowie's ability to buy such things 
 seemed to refine him into a state of less commonness. 
 It was one of those prettinesses, those little decencies, 
 necessary to make tolerable a relationship with a man 
 like Cowie : it was like the distance at which he stood 
 from her, the whiteness of collar and glossiness of boots 
 which marked his aspect when he came into her 
 presence. ... It was laugh-enkindling to picture
 
 212 THE ROSE-COLOURED ROOM 
 
 Cowie with hair disordered like Michael Quentin's. 
 That yellow-brown lock coloured just like sea-wrack 
 falling on the pure forehead. . . . 
 
 Drusilla put away the gloves : she found them 
 smug and abhorrent and thought that she would 
 never wear them. But Cowie came on New Year's 
 Eve with tickets for " The Messiah " to be per- 
 formed next day in St. Andrew's Hall. Drusilla 
 could not deny herself this joy : she loved music and 
 lived among people who considered the emotionalism 
 produced by it to be an evidence of refinement : the 
 house was terribly dismal, with Aunt Caroline again 
 moping in bed and Mrs. Trathbye crying over John's 
 photograph. How Cowie' s eyes twinkled when 
 Drusilla said : " I'll come." She wore a pair of the 
 gloves and blushed when he smiled at them. 
 
 The appeal of the glorious music, in the dimness of 
 the big hall, electric-lit and foggy, was more potent 
 and more insidious than the appeal of the soft, sweetly 
 smelling little gloves. Drusilla had often heard that 
 music ministered to one's higher nature : she thought 
 of the starvation of the higher nature in a life without 
 concerts, theatres, and picture-galleries. She looked 
 at the women all around her and wondered if they 
 always had as much joy and culture as they needed, 
 and men to escort them here and there in taxicabs, 
 to draw their coats over their shoulders and pick up 
 things that they dropped. There was something 
 alluring in a man's mere physical courtesies to a 
 woman. 
 
 The mingling sounds of the instruments and the 
 confusion of feelings they induced sank into a murmur 
 of expectancy ; and the voice of the great soprano 
 rose, like the voice of love over the struggle of emotions
 
 THE HAPPY WARRIOR 213 
 
 in a human life ; a clear voice, passionate, pure, 
 single-hearted, audaciously glad and confident. 
 
 " I know that my Redeemer liveth . . ." 
 
 " Glorious, isn't she ? " Cowie said, at the end of 
 the solo, moved by Drusilla's emotion. ..." It's a 
 pity these singers get so fat . . . wouldn't need to 
 mind with a voice like that." He laughed tremu- 
 lously, colouring. 
 
 Drusilla laughed too, senselessly, as she hurriedly 
 dried the tears off her cheeks. She was saying to 
 herself, as a prayer, that she would have faith in love. 
 That divine soaring voice, rising from the welter of 
 sounds cried : " I know ! " 
 
 " Won't you come and have some tea ? " Cowie said 
 shyly, on the steps. She hesitated, then acquiesced, 
 doubtful if it would be quite a " nice " thing. Cowie 
 put his arm about her and guided her through the 
 red-brown fog in which flared orange and white and 
 scarlet lamps. 
 
 They parted at the Trathbyes' door, for, hear- 
 ing of Aunt Caroline's illness, Cowie refused to 
 go in. 
 
 " I hope I may come up and ask how your aunt 
 is ? " he said, with an arch laugh. Drusilla had 
 laughed too before she was aware of it ; and suddenly 
 Cowie had caught both her gloved hands, pressing 
 them against his chest, kissing them. 
 
 "Don't," Drusilla gasped. "Let go. ... No, 
 don't, please." She got into the house and shut the 
 door, disregarding something that Cowie was saying 
 through the letter-box. 
 
 " I was a fool to go," she said to herself passion- 
 ately. " He cares more than I thought." There 
 was something frightening in Cowie's bodily strength
 
 214 THE ROSE-COLOURED ROOM 
 
 in the fact that he could hold her so that she could 
 not escape. And his eyes held something that 
 frightened her too a dominance, a sureness that took 
 no account of her denials. . . . Oh, it was the con- 
 fidence of a little life, ignorant of all forces outside its 
 own boundaries : not the superb sureness of a soul 
 that knew God ! 
 
 " But I shouldn't have gone with him," Drusilla 
 said. " Poor fellow, he cares a great deal in his own 
 way and it isn't right." 
 
 " We've had to send for the doctor for your aunt," 
 Mrs. Trathbye said, with a reproachful air, as her 
 daughter entered the kitchen. " I was quite alarmed 
 by the state she was in and I alone in the house with 
 her at the time. No, of course, you can't do anything 
 now : Essie and Kathleen have been back for hours 
 now and we have done everything there was to do. 
 Upon my word, I thought your aunt was dying : she 
 became perfectly livid and as cold as this knife I'm 
 holding in my hand. . . ." 
 
 Aunt Caroline had a long illness ; and in the middle 
 of it there came a letter from an Edinburgh editor to 
 whom Michael's uncle had written some months ago. 
 The editor stated that he had a vacancy on his staff 
 and would be glad if Miss Trathbye would send in an 
 application. 
 
 Aunt Caroline wept piteously. It was a situation 
 beyond her hopes, involving little writing but a good 
 deal of going about to " functions " ; and she could 
 not leave her bed and would not be fit for work for at 
 least six months. 
 
 " Ah, isn't it strange ? Isn't it a strange thing ? " 
 Mrs. Trathbye repeated with a gloomy delight. 
 " Nothing ever goes right with a Trathbye nor with
 
 THE HAPPY WARRIOR 215 
 
 my own family either. . . . We might have known 
 it would happen this way with a Trathbye." 
 
 Aunt Caroline, comforted by a sense of a great 
 tragic destiny, resigned herself. She was drinking a 
 cup of tea, and lay back among her pillows, looking so 
 meagre and frail that it seemed hardly likely that a 
 full-grown curse would find it worth while to pursue 
 her. 
 
 Drusilla flushed vividly at the thought that came 
 to her. The wish to make money was growing stronger 
 and saner in her : she was impatient of the Trathbye 
 hopelessness in herself and in the others. She wanted 
 so many things that she could not have why shouldn't 
 she work for them as other people did ? In the deeps 
 of her heart there stirred a dim fear of the moods 
 created in herself by those ungratified desires ; 
 reckless moods in which a weak heart was tempted to 
 do vile things ; in which one's very longing for good 
 was debased into an instrument of evil. . . . 
 
 The fear of these passions was stronger now than 
 the fear of her mother. There must be some under- 
 standing, some pity for her somewhere in her mother's 
 heart ! A woman could not refuse to help her own 
 daughter to be good. 
 
 " Mother, couldn't I go in for that situation ? " 
 Drusilla asked, deprecating. " Just to keep it till 
 Aunt Garlic's able to work ? " 
 
 But Aunt Caroline, questioned, broke into envious 
 rage and terror. What right had Drusilla to take her 
 work away from her ? Let Drusilla find an editor for 
 herself and not be trying to steal other people's only 
 means of keeping body and soul together. . . . The 
 poor creature's passion was such and so consciously 
 supported by her condition of weakness, that Mrs.
 
 216 THE ROSE-COLOURED ROOM 
 
 Trathbye, at first not unwilling to consider her 
 daughter's idea, yielded with a : " We'd better say 
 no more about it." It seemed a pity to let this sorely 
 needed salary slip from their grasp ; but Mrs. Trathbye 
 had fallen into a state of mental indolence to which a 
 continued submission to wants and cares was easier 
 than initiative. . . . She had had besides a disquieting 
 vision of Drusilla at functions in frocks and hats 
 which her profession would justify. 
 
 " It's insane ! " the respected Essie said to her 
 mother. But Aunt Caroline's state of health fortified 
 her against all attempts at remonstrance. She hid 
 the editor's letter in the fear that her niece might get 
 the address and write on her own behalf. 
 
 Drusilla bought newspapers and began to answer 
 advertisements. She would go into a shop into an 
 office as a beginner. After all she was not twenty-five 
 and, with her hair in a bow, could easily pass as sixteen. 
 She got no answer to her first twenty letters : the 
 twenty-first brought a post card asking her to call at 
 an office. 
 
 " Ah, you'll make nothing of it, child," Mrs. 
 Trathbye said. It was a wet day and Drusilla put on 
 an old short skirt under her coat and dressed her hair 
 in a ribbon-bowed loop so that she could let it down 
 as she went up the stairs to the office. The amiable 
 man looked at her. 
 
 " You're too young, I'm afraid," he said pleasantly. 
 " We want a young lady of three-and-twenty or so." 
 
 The second time that she received a card asking her 
 to call Drusilla put on a long skirt and dressed her 
 hah* high : she saw a woman who said that they 
 wanted a girl of fourteen. She received no more 
 replies to her unbusinesslike letters.
 
 THE HAPPY WARRIOR 217 
 
 VII 
 
 At the beginning of February Essie came home one 
 evening with a desperate face and told her mother, 
 shortly, that the business had failed and all the girls 
 must go. She turned with a sullen disgust from her 
 mother's exclamations of wrath at the injustice. 
 " What's the good of talking ? " she said ; and she 
 recommenced the search for a situation, reading the 
 long columns of The Mercury and The Western World ; 
 trudging here and there, downcast, silent, morose. 
 One night in the bedroom Brasilia looked at Essie 
 undressing and saw tears slipping over her cheeks, 
 and marvelled at her mother's blindness to the 
 existence of the cashier's friend. 
 
 " Essie," she said, when they were in bed in the 
 dark, " do you ever see Mortlake now ? " 
 
 She feared a rebuff ; but Essie answered in a voice 
 that quivered : 
 
 " No. . . . How could I ? He just used to come up 
 to see Bramley." 
 
 " I know. . . . But couldn't you see him somehow ? 
 I mean, you wouldn't need to let him know you had 
 done anything. Isn't there any way you might meet 
 him again ? It seems such a pity to break off what 
 might ... be a nice friendship." 
 
 " How could I ? " Essie said. A tinge of hope came 
 into her voice : " Some of the girls do things like that. 
 ... I don't see how I could : it wouldn't be nice." 
 
 " Oh, nice ! " Brasilia blazed out. " You don't 
 know what it might come to mean to you or to him. 
 Why shouldn't you do it whether it's nice or not ? " 
 
 " There's no sense in talking like that," Essie said 
 with a cold disapproval ; and she sank back into that
 
 218 THE ROSE-COLOURED ROOM 
 
 respectable, hopeless, mysterious apathy in which 
 most of her life had been spent. 
 
 They had not enough of money to pay the doctor 
 and to buy food. Kathleen, the only worker, came 
 and went with a silent, noble patience : the crimson 
 had gone out of her cheeks and the family no longer 
 jested about her plumpness. They had outbursts of 
 tenderness to each other ; outbursts of bitterness in 
 which they said horrible things that burned their 
 hearts, followed by foolish weeping reconciliations. 
 Aunt Caroline, since the newspaper episode, could not 
 bear the presence of Drusilla : at the sight of the girl 
 the sick woman would sometimes spring madly from 
 her bed and rush from the room, slamming the door. 
 Drusilla often imagined Aunt Caroline, gone mad, 
 attacking her with a knife and killing her. Once she 
 pictured Aunt Caroline dead, having killed herself; 
 and thence she passed easily to the thought of Aunt 
 Caroline dying of this illness a result which Mrs. 
 Trathbye frequently prophesied. 
 
 It was unthinkably terrible that she should find 
 relief in the thought of Aunt Caroline dead ; in the 
 closing of the cruel, stupid, hostile eyes, the silencing 
 of the coarsened yet attenuated voice, with its phrases 
 of tenement slang, the debased vocabulary produced by 
 years of intercourse with washerwomen, charwomen, 
 dealers in old clothes, and tradespeople. 
 
 It was a hideous thought : it frightened Drusilla. 
 She found herself arguing that, since such ugly ideas 
 were the products of material miseries, almost any 
 means of escaping from wretched material conditions 
 were justifiable. Then she wondered what fiend had 
 been sent with this thought to tempt her to cast 
 herself down.
 
 THE HAPPY WARRIOR 219 
 
 She would get work and save herself from what ? 
 She conceived the idea of going back to the art shop 
 and asking them to help her. It was three years since 
 she had left it, but she felt a warm sense of encourage- 
 ment at her heart as she recalled the manager's kind 
 eyes. 
 
 She went, and found a new manageress and two 
 very smart, staring assistants. The lame young man 
 was dead, they told her, and the manager had gone to 
 a branch at Manchester. The manageress took down 
 her name and address and Drusilla went out, feeling 
 that the assistants were staring at her down-trodden 
 boots and faded skirt. 
 
 It was very foggy and the night was closing in. 
 She had no money for the car, and her worn boots, 
 jarring on the pavement, hurt her feet and exhausted 
 her nerves. When she reached Jamaica Bridge she 
 paused, partly because she was annoyed by the dodging 
 on the footpath ; and looked over the granite parapet. 
 The foggy river had a weird effect of an unplumbed 
 pit of darkness : it was solemn, almost shuddersome, 
 yet it had a suggestion of restfulness. Death, she 
 thought, must be like that black peacefulness under 
 the struggling lives on the bridge. 
 
 " Miss Trathbye," Cowie said. " Not thinking of 
 suicide ? " 
 
 Drusilla turned. It seemed to her a long time since 
 she had thought of Alick Cowie, or of Grace Morland, 
 or Patullo. She had thought often of Michael Quentin 
 and her realisations of the miseries of physical life : 
 but she could not write to Michael often because it was 
 so difficult to get twopence halfpenny for a stamp ; 
 and Michael always waited for her letter before he 
 wrote again. The thought of him in Athens or Rome,
 
 220 THE ROSE-COLOURED ROOM 
 
 or in his beautiful house on the Ayrshire coast, was 
 becoming again a fairy-tale, a bright dream-thing 
 which had no obvious link with her daily life. . . . 
 She did not know herself how much of this was owing 
 to physical exhaustion. She had always accepted 
 her beauty and vitality as signs of a strength that 
 could resist what the German Socialist called " un- 
 favourable conditions " to which others must succumb. 
 
 " Come along and have some tea," Cowie said 
 familiarly. 
 
 " I knew you were going to say that," Drusilla 
 laughed, with a pleasant famishing thought of a cosy 
 room, of cakes and tea, of a drive home in a car. 
 
 " Why, you're walking lame, Miss Trathbye ! " 
 Cowie said. " What is it ? Acorn? Or chilblains ?" 
 
 " I don't get chilblains," Drusilla said, disgusted. 
 Cowie had a lower middle-class habit of talking about 
 diseases. " It's my shoe that's hurting me," she 
 added gently, fearing she had been unkind. 
 
 Cowie looked down quickly, and she felt that his 
 eyes alert to observe obvious things had noted the 
 dismal condition of her feet. They went towards 
 Burrow's tea-rooms in Union Street, Cowie eagerly 
 making a way for Drusilla through the crowd. 
 
 " Reminds you of New Year's Day and ' The 
 Messiah,' " Cowie said. " First of January im-him ! 
 im-him ! and it's two days from the end of February 
 now. Tempus has been fugiting at a fine rate 
 hasn't the old boy ? You haven't been along to the 
 Eire lately ? " 
 
 " No," Drusilla said. " I've missed all the meet- 
 ings since Christmas. I've been busy . . ." 
 
 Cowie shot a jealous glance at her and her pride 
 was relieved. To be suspected of " going with "
 
 THE HAPPY WARRIOR 221 
 
 another young man was much more gratifying than 
 to be pitied for the want of inspectable coats and hats. 
 
 " Aunt Caroline's been so ill ... " Drusilla offered. 
 
 " Of course," Cowie said, brightening. Suddenly 
 his face was solemn and he thrust out an arm so 
 ostentatiously protective and possessive that Drusilla, 
 affronted, slid from its contact. 
 
 " I beg your pardon," Cowie said. " Did I annoy 
 you ? . . . I didn't want that woman to touch you." 
 
 Drusilla looked at the woman, who seemed young, 
 with a face of curiously porcelain-like complexion 
 between her big black hat and black furs. It did not 
 seem to be strange that Cowie should have known at 
 once that the woman was untouchable : the know- 
 ledge was harmonious with his manliness, his air of 
 citizenship and responsibility. This time his pro- 
 tectiveness brought no feeling of offence but a rather 
 pleasant thrill. 
 
 " Do you think these women are to blame ? " 
 Drusilla asked, remembering the things that she had 
 read in Miss Morland's Socialist and Suffrage pamph- 
 lets. " They are often driven to it by want, aren't 
 they ? Because they get such poor wages." 
 
 " That is so, no doubt," said Cowie, approving her 
 broadness of view. " There aren't two doubts it's 
 men that are most to blame in this business. Mind 
 you, I think these Militant Suffragettes go too far in 
 the things they say as well as the things they do : but 
 there's a lot of truth in some of their complaints about 
 the economic position of women. Personally, I don't 
 approve of women being in the market as competitors 
 to men at all." 
 
 " But they have to earn wages ? " 
 
 Cowie smiled at her indulgently.
 
 222 THE ROSE-COLOURED ROOM 
 
 " There's only one ideal career for a woman," he 
 said ; " and that's to take care of a husband and 
 children." He piloted her through Burrow's tiled 
 shop into the pretty tea-room behind. 
 
 " But there are more women than men ? " Drusilla 
 said, with her woeful puzzled air, as she sank down 
 into the cushioned seat. 
 
 Cowie smiled again, staring at the parted lips and 
 wide serious eyes. He did not hear what she said, 
 nor attempt to answer it. 
 
 Drusilla was slowly pulling off a pair of the gloves 
 that he had given her .... In the market ! She 
 remembered that the German Socialist had spoken of 
 women's beauty as " capital." It seemed not difficult 
 to understand how a girl who was cold and hungry 
 and in fear of the destruction of her good looks and the 
 atrophying of her power to enjoy, might in a reckless 
 mood sell herself to a man who was not abhorrent 
 to her. She might do it to hear music to keep her 
 higher nature alive and to have pretty things for the 
 salvation of her refinement. When a girl did that 
 without being married people said that she had 
 committed a great sin and she had, in spite of all the 
 scientific Socialists in the universe ! . . . Yet it was 
 strange that when, with just the same motives, she 
 married the man . . . 
 
 ** Pretty room, isn't it ? " Cowie's voice came. 
 " What'll you have ? Tea," he said pleasantly to the 
 waitress, " and some cream cakes and sandwiches." 
 
 Drusilla had eaten nothing since one o'clock, when 
 she had lunched on fried potatoes, dry bread, and 
 cocoa. It was delightful to feel that Cowie was 
 grateful to her for every sandwich or cake that she 
 ate ; for during the last month the Trathbyes had
 
 THE HAPPY WARRIOR 223 
 
 fallen into a ghastly habit of watching each other eat. 
 Drusilla, as the meal went on, was more and more 
 happily conscious of the contrast between it and tea 
 at home. The room was so pretty, so dainty and 
 warm, with its firelight, its shaded lamps, its flowers, 
 its discreet sinking of the commercial in the social 
 aspect. There were gay groups and couples at the 
 tables ; and Cowie was engagingly merry, pretending 
 to think that the currants in the cakes were dead 
 flies and saying : " Good-bye " to Drusilla when she 
 accepted a three-storied confection, mosaicked with 
 green and pink. Even that curious middle-aged 
 pompousness and lack of enthusiasm which appeared 
 every now and then in the midst of his boyish glee, 
 was on this occasion not unpleasing to Drusilla. It 
 gave her the feeling that he was so much more re- 
 sponsible than she, that he knew so much better 
 what they were both doing, that she could not blame 
 herself for any rash semblance of " encouraging " him. 
 
 " I want to ask you again," Cowie murmured 
 suddenly in the close leading to the Trathbyes' house : 
 it was a well of red-brown darkness, for the fog filled 
 it and something had gone wrong with the gaslight. 
 " No, not just the same question," Cowie said, 
 laughing tenderly, pressing close to her in the darkness. 
 
 "... I want you to take a fortnight to think. This 
 is the 26th of February take till the 13th of March. 
 Yes, you will ? " 
 
 Cowie had gone, taking it for granted. At night, 
 Drusilla said to Essie, tentatively : 
 
 " Alick Cowie met me in town : he took me to tea 
 at Burrow's." 
 
 Essie was tying up her brown hair, to the brushing 
 of which she had again become indifferent.
 
 224 THE ROSE-COLOURED ROOM 
 
 " Is anything going to come of it ? " she asked 
 stolidly, with averted eyes. 
 
 " Come of it ? " Drusilla said stupidly, startled into 
 disingenuousness. 
 
 " Yes. If he asks you, are you going to take him ? 
 ... I would if I were you." 
 
 " I don't see how you can expect ..." Drusilla 
 murmured, wounded : but Essie went on, with a kind 
 of dull passion : 
 
 " There's nothing wrong with him : he's a good 
 fellow, and good-looking ; and he's a doctor if his 
 people are common : a doctor's the social equal of 
 anybody. . . . And he's going up in his profession. 
 . . . We're not likely, any of us, to get many chances. 
 Mother doesn't do like other people's mothers. . . . 
 And if we don't get married what's to become of us ? 
 especially poor you when you haven't ever done 
 anything. You're the only one of us that's likely to 
 have such a good chance." 
 
 It was this admission, more than anything else, 
 that impressed Drusilla with a sense of crisis : Essie's 
 acknowledgment of her sister's attractiveness was like 
 the laying bare of some long-known but unmentioned 
 family fact like the inscribing of a dead person's age 
 on a tombstone or the appearance at a wedding of at 
 other times invisible uncles. 
 
 " Don't you think you should care ? . . . Don't 
 you think you should feel you couldn't live without the 
 man . . . ? " Drusilla faltered, in face of that great 
 negative weight of things left out of her sister's life. 
 
 " I think you should care for your own people," 
 Essie said, obstinately looking away. " What do 
 people mean by falling in love ? You get to care for 
 any nice man, just because he's a man, if he's good to
 
 THE HAPPY WARRIOR 225 
 
 you. I think you must get to be grateful to him for 
 marrying you." 
 
 Brasilia muttered an " Oh ! " of revolted scorn : 
 but Essie went on with her bitter conviction of her 
 own good sense and the absurdity of all other points 
 of view. 
 
 " I don't see what else you can do. You said you 
 wanted to help . . . and it would make a big differ- 
 ence : not just in the food here, but to Kathleen and 
 me. When you've a married sister with a house, 
 you've got chances . . . and you're the good-looking 
 one and the eldest. . . . Mother'll never help us that 
 way. ... I know I'd do it if I were you." 
 
 They put out the light and lay down on their beds 
 and Essie slept. How old she seemed to Brasilia, 
 how awful ! She represented the great trivial pas- 
 sive pressing force of material things ; weighing 
 on the soul, bearing it down, uncomprehendingly 
 stifling it. 
 
 Brasilia said to herself that she would write to 
 Michael, she would tell him the truth, she would cry 
 to him to save her, as she used to call to God : she 
 would not let custom kill her soul. 
 
 But daylight snapped the link between the dream 
 world and physical life. She could not beg to Michael : 
 no nice girl could tell her wants unasked. It was 
 Michael who was to blame : the pain in her heart 
 blazed into anger : he had gone away, he had written 
 inexpressive letters : everybody said that he could not 
 care. . . . Would an act of defiance bring Michael 
 back ? An engaged girl was not married. 
 
 On the fifteenth of March Miss Morland, in a long, 
 crossed, muddled letter to Michael, wrote skittishly : 
 
 p
 
 226 THE ROSE-COLOURED ROOM 
 
 " We have actually an engagement to announce at 
 the Eire ! Little Dillie Trathbye and Alick Cowie ! ! 
 Everybody expected it would have been sooner as it 
 was easy to see it was a case. Alick is getting on 
 very well so there is no reason why they should not 
 be married soon. ."
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 THE WHITE STUDIO 
 I 
 
 COWIE walked up a plaster- smudged board, and 
 through a doorless doorway on the ground floor of an 
 unfinished tenement in a southern suburb. The place, 
 full of May sunshine, was blithe as a bird-haunted 
 coppice with the whistling and singing of workmen. 
 
 Cowie was whistling too, and his eyes were happy 
 as he considered the four little rooms in the ground- 
 floor flat. From the front windows there was a 
 delightful view of a common which Cowie called a 
 " park " ; and from the back windows could be seen 
 a sloping piece of waste ground, drab on its bare 
 patches, and intensely green where grasses and haw- 
 thorn-bushes were. At the foot of this slope the river 
 Cart gleamed between clayey banks. 
 
 There were no doors in the little flat and no windows, 
 and there was a rubbled hole where the kitchen range 
 was to glow. But it was easy for Cowie's warm glad 
 heart to fill the place with warmth and joyaunce. 
 The white, empty rooms, with their raw odours of 
 plaster and wood, did not need for him the benediction 
 of the sunlight. . . . He took out a measuring-tape 
 and, with attentive eyes and a thrust-out under-lip, 
 made sure of the breadth and length of the parlour 
 and the two bedrooms. His mother and sisters were 
 going to give him inlaid linoleum as a wedding present. 
 Essie, Kathleen, and wee Aggie, the prospective 
 bridesmaids, were to buy a set of china. Cowie 
 
 227
 
 228 THE ROSE-COLOURED ROOM 
 
 looked at the thirteen-paned cupboard built into the 
 parlour wall and visualised it lined with velvet to 
 display the cups and saucers. Then he went back 
 into the kitchen and tried to picture pots and pans 
 and dishes on the shelves : but he failed utterly in 
 this because (he found) he did not know what things 
 were needed, nor where they should hang or stand. 
 So he went to the window-frame, sunny and glass- 
 less, and gazed at the green and brown land and the 
 still unbudded hawthorns ; and at the sight of the 
 unprotected banks of the river a thought came to him, 
 so beautiful and solemn, so full of wonder and of pain, 
 that his eyes grew wet. 
 
 Rolling up his tape, he went out, whistling, to the 
 front of the houses, where he saw a young workman 
 lying on his back on a heap of gold-coloured sand. 
 
 " Are the painters anywhere about ? " Cowie 
 asked. The workman waved his hand towards a 
 more developed portion of the tenement. 
 
 " They're working at the second close," he said, 
 eyeing Cowie humorously. 
 
 Cowie found the master-painter ; and he too had 
 amused eyes as he considered this young man, so 
 obviously about to be married. 
 
 " I wanted to ask you can I have the woodwork 
 in the parlour and bedrooms all white ? " Cowie asked 
 modestly. 
 
 " Ah, that'll be the wife's notion eh ? " the painter 
 gurgled. Cowie, laughing and blushing, was willing 
 to be questioned : he wanted to tell the painters all 
 about it to tell the workman on the sand-heap and 
 those other workmen moving about a gleaming white 
 tank of lime. 
 
 The master-painter was of opinion that it could
 
 THE WHITE STUDIO 229 
 
 easily be managed if Cowie asked the landlord in time 
 and was willing to pay a little more 
 
 " Folks in your case don't mind that," the painter 
 said, jogging Cowie with his elbow. " When's it to 
 be?" 
 
 Cowie replied that it was to be in June, when, they 
 had been told, the house would be quite ready. The 
 painter pouted his lips and raised and dropped his 
 shoulders with the air of a man amusedly sceptical 
 of the words of builders, house-agents, and landlords, 
 and tickled by the simplicity of young couples. 
 
 " If you get into it by July . . ."he said. 
 
 " We'll see about that," Cowie said, with a resolu- 
 tion that might have made a whole tenement spring, 
 painted and furnished, from the soil. 
 
 Three weeks later, in truth, the range was built 
 within the kitchen fireplace and the house was papered 
 and painted in the colours that Drusilla herself had 
 chosen. The water was "laid on" in the long green- 
 and-white bathroom and the little blue-and-white 
 scullery : only the electric lights and bells were 
 wanting ; and Cowie walked whistling through the 
 park to Lochaber Gardens, to bring Drusilla over to 
 see their new house. 
 
 Cowie, in his new brown suit, ran upstairs to the 
 Trathbyes' flat. His cheeks were very pink and his 
 fringed eyes shone : but his face was dulled into a 
 quiet anger as he heard Aunt Caroline's voice within : 
 
 " What are you touching my books for ? I'm sick 
 of the sight of you. I'll be glad when you're gone." 
 
 " Old devil ! " Cowie muttered as he rang. It was 
 on account of these outbursts of Aunt Caroline 
 completely unbalanced since her illness that Cowie's 
 marriage had been hastened. But he did not feel
 
 230 THE ROSE-COLOURED ROOM 
 
 grateful to her ; and, though he argued that hers was 
 a "mental case," he hated the futile creature. He 
 looked at her sullenly as she crossed the hall carrying 
 her account-book and pen. 
 
 " Can't trust my papers out of my sight," she was 
 muttering. " People wanting to take my work from 
 me. . . ." 
 
 She gave Cowie no greeting, for she had transferred 
 to him something of the passion of dislike that she 
 felt against her niece. 
 
 " Your aunt looks pretty bad," Cowie said, decently, 
 to Drusilla, as they went downstairs. From the day 
 of their engagement he had spoken of her family 
 affairs with an air of having resolved to be as pleasant 
 and respectful as possible, but with no concessions to 
 her reserves or vanities. Drusilla had been humiliated 
 to find how correctly he had deduced from trifling 
 things that he had observed in her family life. Cowie 
 had no illusions : he had not five thousand a year nor 
 a rainbow-coloured house. He said this himself, 
 humorously, adding that he was accustomed to keep 
 his eyes open. " Of course I knew ! " was his laughing 
 exclamation, when Drusilla, ashamed of something 
 said, tried, faltering, to explain. Cowie's medical 
 training enabled him to diagnose, with a briskly 
 scientific ah*, the cases of Drusilla's relatives. " You'll 
 gen'elly find there's a physical reason at the bottom 
 of bad temper," he said. " Of course you can't 
 pronounce definitely whether the mind begins to 
 affect the body or the body the mind. It's like 
 the riddle about the hen and the egg." He often 
 made allusions to well-known jests and retold old 
 stories ; and Drusilla received them with a gentle 
 feigning of amusement. She had read in the women's
 
 THE WHITE STUDIO 231 
 
 magazines that this was the way to hold a husband's 
 love. 
 
 Cowie, of humble means and position and with a 
 chasteningly " common " mother and sisters, did not 
 prick Mrs. Trathbye to the anguish of envy roused by 
 the thought of her daughter's marriage with Michael 
 Quentin. Besides, the state of material misery into 
 which the Trathbyes had fallen made Cowie's gifts 
 things for which to be grateful ; and, more potent 
 than this, was Mrs. Trathbye's sensitiveness to the 
 young man's masculinity, to his talk and fun and 
 vivacity. He was very generous ; and his mother 
 and sisters had the same good-nature, the same warm 
 hospitality. They admired Mrs. Trathbye candidly. 
 " Your mother's so lady-like," they said to Drusilla ; 
 and the compliment gave Mrs. Trathbye the feeling 
 that her mere presence in the Cowie's house was more 
 than a fair exchange for the plentiful teas and suppers, 
 the gifts of flowers and fruit and honey and cakes and 
 tickets. " We can't entertain," Mrs. Trathbye said, 
 flushing, with a smiling haughtiness, to Alick Cowie's 
 mother. " My husband's property . . . ' And 
 Cowie's mother who, amazingly, was not fat, but a 
 little thin alert person answered with a scolding 
 kindliness. Mrs. Trathbye's bow, on the presentation 
 of their friends, was a thing in which the Cowies 
 gloried. ... It is true that the girls did not make 
 friends, as Cowie could have wished them to do, with 
 Essie and Kathleen ; and that even Drusilla, deter- 
 minedly sweet to them, did not seem to pierce to the 
 inner heart of his family. Bessie, dark-haired and 
 bright-complexioned like her brother, but with a 
 thinned cheek and a coarsened bloom, was a pro- 
 fessional elder sister ; tender, with just a touch of
 
 232 THE ROSE-COLOURED ROOM 
 
 patronage, to her mother, respectful to her brother, 
 laughingly indulgent to her sister. She was many 
 years Cowie's senior. Drusilla had not yet recovered 
 from the surprise of seeing " wee Aggie," whom she 
 had pictured as a glossy-haired child of ten : for Aggie 
 was nearly her own age and appeared to her much 
 older a great, jolly creature with earrings and a deep 
 laugh ; creamy complexioned, laboriously coiffured, 
 and decidedly dressed. She hung about Drusilla, 
 affectionately, with a little-girlish admiration. 
 
 "You're awfully pretty in that, "Aggie said every 
 time Drusilla changed her frock, or hat, or collar. 
 " Crivens, I wish't I'd hair like yours ! . . . You've 
 such a lovely mouth." Drusilla grew fond of Aggie. 
 
 It was only now and then that Mrs. Trathbye's envy 
 of her daughter still out-flashed. For example, she 
 did not like any congratulating friend to allude to the 
 good looks of Cowie ; and she could not bear any 
 demonstration on his part towards Drusilla. But on 
 this latter point she had little ground for complaint. 
 Drusilla was very shy : she would hardly allow Cowie 
 to touch her, he said ; and he exulted in this delicacy 
 of hers, yielding to her restrictions so that she felt 
 relieved. Yet once he had caught her to him, roughly, 
 irresistibly, muttering : " Just wait ! . . . " It had 
 frightened and dishonoured her and she had wept ; 
 and Cowie had asked her forgiveness, tenderly, but 
 with a humorous air of knowing that women's tears 
 were all pretence, and their reserve a wile to keep up 
 their value. 
 
 They went about together, looking for furniture for 
 the new flat. Cowie avoided cheap shops, and con- 
 scientiously preferred dulled hues and simple designs : 
 he had learned that an avowed love of rich colours
 
 THE WHITE STUDIO 283 
 
 stamped people as vulgar. " Beautiful, isn't it ? " 
 he said, of all things grey-green or blue-grey. He 
 made jokes about shiny pictures and noisy carpets. 
 " Better to get a few nice carbon prints," he said, 
 before a fluffy brown Corot. " There's nothing so 
 bourgeois to my mind as folks with wee rooms aping 
 the customs of folks with big ones. My, I've seen 
 folks with a picture that covered the whole of one of 
 their walls ; and a gold frame pfui ! all over wi' 
 flowers and scrolls and bunches of grapes." In his 
 animation Cowie forgot to use his literary society 
 diction : his speech was almost like Aggie's ; and the 
 artlessness of it struck Drusilla pleasantly. It was 
 satisfactory, too, to find Cowie so reasonable and (it 
 seemed to her) refined in his ideas about furnishing. 
 She was timid herself and rather vague : but he 
 received all her suggestions with an eager respect 
 that bracingly contrasted with the contempt and 
 bitterness which her family showed in this matter. 
 
 " A nice-looking house she'll have ! " Kathleen said ; 
 and Essie was disturbingly silent about most of the 
 articles purchased. 
 
 " She's anaemic," Cowie said cheerfully. " I saw 
 it as soon as I looked at her lips. . . ." He brought a 
 bottle of port wine for Essie, and advised her to eat 
 porridge. He would have attended Aunt Caroline 
 free of charge ; but she said in his hearing that she 
 preferred " a decent doctor " and he went away 
 temporarily huffed. But the next day he reappeared 
 with his air of dutiful pleasantness and said to Drusilla : 
 
 " I'm sorry for your aunt : there's no two doubts 
 an unmarried woman of a certain age is a miserable 
 sort of creature. . . . They form a large percentage 
 of the suicide cases did you not know that ? "
 
 234 THE ROSE-COLOURED ROOM 
 
 He had a habit of saying : " Did you not know 
 that ? " It irritated Drusilla and even puzzled and 
 disappointed her : for it was a part of the non- 
 romantic attitude of his mind towards her. He was 
 plainly very much in love with her : but she found 
 that that phrase, as commonly interpreted, left out of 
 account much that existed in Cowie's feelings and 
 implied much that was lacking. Cowie seemed 
 curiously inobservant of, even insensible to, her 
 beauty : indeed she saw that he was genuinely 
 surprised when others spoke of it. She found that 
 he did not know if she were tall or short ; if her hair 
 were curly or smooth, plentiful or scanty. Her sex 
 attracted him, not her beauty : he loved her woman- 
 hood, not her maidenhood. His iterated question : 
 " Did you not know ? " expressed his impatient 
 irreverence of maidenly ignorances, of dreams and 
 wilful delays ; his desire to thrust upon her knowledge 
 and responsibility. He was nearly always cheerful : 
 he had moods of blitheness, when the red blood, 
 running freshly in his body, excited him to merriment 
 and mischief and the follies of happiness : but always, 
 underneath, she divined that strange contented 
 undreaming, unaspiring self with its eyes set on 
 material things, the pompous flippancies precious to 
 middle age. She felt that he was in haste to be old : 
 that it was his will that she should be old beside him. 
 Yet the idea would surely have seemed absurd to any 
 outsider ; for it seemed as if he were giving her a good 
 time such as she had never had before a glad dazzling 
 time of spring and summer days. He took her out 
 a great deal : she became familiar with the beautiful 
 country places around Glasgow as they looked in April 
 and May. They tramped the wet sunny roads between
 
 THE WHITE STUDIO 235 
 
 hedges unthinkably bright : they crossed moorlands 
 just waking to life : they played golf on emerald 
 slopes set in a landscape of crimson-brown woods just 
 fired with green : they lay in woods of hyacinths, 
 and she saw Cowie's handsome fresh face laugh at her 
 from daisied fields and the exuberance of hawthorn 
 bloom. The power of taking railway tickets and 
 going to such places seemed a wonderful thing, giving 
 a man control over the souls of his fellows ; and she 
 saw in the fields and the woods other couples : the 
 earth seemed full of them : it was as if all human 
 beings had become paired, like the cards in the game 
 of " Old Maid." She saw them at dusk, in the 
 shadows of trees and hedges, standing silent, close- 
 clasped ; and she told herself that a man's manhood 
 drew a woman's womanhood and Love came of it 
 and happiness. . . . There was another thing of which 
 she had dreamed but it was a bright madness. 
 
 Cowie preferred even to going into the country to 
 do what he called a " swank down Sauchie." It was 
 his colloquial way of speaking of Sauchiehall Street. 
 It seemed that he had many acquaintances who also 
 " swanked " on the bright spring afternoons ; for he 
 passed with noddings and smilings and liftings of his 
 hat. The footpaths were athrong with people : the 
 shops glittered with brilliant brass and plate-glass 
 and glowed with colours : the picture-palaces showed 
 daintily, little white-domed doorways with variegated 
 bills. Flower-sellers stood by the kerbs with tightly 
 tied nobbles of violets, with tossing shining loads of 
 daffodils, narcissi, and tulips and the sunny gold foam 
 of mimosa splashing over these ; or, as April yielded 
 to May and May to June, with marguerites and 
 marigolds and roses. On the pavement there were
 
 236 THE ROSE-COLOURED ROOM 
 
 the hum and crash of the cars, the twanks of motor- 
 horns, the rattle of cabs and carts. Sandwichmen 
 filed past with the bills of music-halls : groups of girls 
 loitered, with the rich western complexion, the soft 
 dark western eyes. People darted into doorways, or 
 rushed from them, carrying parcels and letters. And 
 always Alexander Cowie was at Drusilla's side, 
 grasping her elbow when she mounted a car or crossed 
 the street, drawing her to a shop window to ask her 
 if she would like such and such a thing, feeding her in 
 tea-shops, paying for her entrance to picture-palaces, 
 calling her attention to some tempting theatrical bill. 
 He was like the incarnation of the city's life a 
 frivolous life of bread-winning, of shop-gazing, tea- 
 drinking, pleasure-hunting, hurrying ; a life that took 
 no count of solemn dreams. 
 
 Was it not best for her to forget Michael Quentin ? 
 He had not accepted her challenge : her engagement 
 to Cowie had not brought him back, desperate, wildly 
 protesting. She had only dreamed that he loved her. 
 . . . And Cowie was good to her : he loved her so 
 much that sometimes, suddenly, his eyes grew dark 
 and wet and his voice failed. Cowie would always be 
 kind to her : for he was very good to his mother and 
 sisters, and the ladies' papers said that that was an 
 infallible sign. His manners in public were certainly 
 open to criticism : but she noticed that, in the house, 
 he would not allow his mother to lift a heavy kettle ; 
 and he cleaned all the boots. The Cowies had no 
 servant, but he and Drusilla were to have one when 
 they were married. . . . 
 
 He took her about a great deal, and she was gene- 
 rally so tired at night that she fell asleep quickly. If 
 she ever happened to have an empty evening or
 
 THE WHITE STUDIO 287 
 
 afternoon she filled it by going to a dressmaking class 
 and working, with an intense sort of industry, at her 
 trousseau. 
 
 How could she hear the voice of love, fear-filling, 
 terribly sure and passionate, crying : "I know ? " 
 It rang always in the empty depths of her heart : but 
 it sounded far away and dull and dreamlike. Near to 
 her there was the snip of scissors and the rending of 
 stuffs, the whirr of the sewing-machine, the rustle of 
 tissue-paper, the clash of forks and spoons and 
 Cowie's voice. 
 
 " Ah, you'll not get many presents," Mrs. Trathbye 
 said wistfully. But it was surprising how many 
 Drusilla was getting, or rather how many were being 
 sent to the popular Cowie. 
 
 " I'm glad I'll soon be taking you away," Cowie 
 said as they went through the shade and sunshine of 
 the luxuriantly green park. " It isn't a wholesome 
 atmosphere for you to have to live in with that awful, 
 morbid old wife. My theory is that the sexes have 
 a salutary influence on each other that masculine 
 qualities act, as it were, as alkaloids to feminine acids." 
 He advanced these commonplaces always with the 
 air of a pioneer ; and, as Drusilla was not readily 
 responsive to this one, he repeated it with a touch of 
 indignant surprise. " An exclusively feminine house- 
 hold isn't wholesome," he said. 
 
 " No," Drusilla assented. " But I don't think men 
 quite understand I mean they overrate their import- 
 ance to women. If women had real careers and edu- 
 cation and were paid and respected like men . . ." 
 
 Cowie shook his head, smiling archly : he was 
 amused by her feminine disingenuousness. 
 
 " No, but really, Alick ! " Drusilla protested. She
 
 238 THE ROSE-COLOURED ROOM 
 
 addressed him thus : but she still always spoke of 
 and thought of him as " Cowie." " Men think all a 
 woman's misfortunes are summed up in not being 
 married," she said. " But the funny thing is women 
 hardly ever want to get married just for the sake of 
 being married, I mean. . . ." 
 
 Cowie was smiling more broadly. 
 
 " I'm sure Aunt Caroline never wanted to marry 
 any one," Drusilla said. " I dare say she's angry now 
 because she didn't, but that's different ; or perhaps 
 she's angry because she didn't want it, or because 
 other people didn't want it." 
 
 " There's a want of perspicuity," Cowie said, 
 laughing. " My dear lassie, you're like all the rest of 
 your sex and I love you all the better for it, Dillie 
 dear. But the ladies never can be persuaded to look 
 facts in the face. Take your own case now, for 
 example. If women don't want to marry men, as 
 you say, why, may I ask, are you marrying me ? as, 
 please God, you're going to do on the twentieth of 
 June. I know you're not doing it for my money " 
 Cowie laughed happily " so I infer that it must be 
 for myself. Now, deny it if you can, you deceitful 
 woman ! " 
 
 They were in a narrow path, deep set among dark- 
 leaved, pale-blossomed rhododendrons, and in this 
 solitude Cowie again came close to her, pressing his 
 arm about her. Drusilla, withdrawing, walked on 
 in silence. 
 
 " The Eire's going to give us a present, did you 
 know ? " Cowie said as they entered the new flat. 
 " Very handsome of them : I told Moore of course 
 I wasn't expecting anything of the kind. Well, here 
 we are."
 
 THE WHITE STUDIO 239 
 
 The curious dulled state in which Drusilla had been 
 living for months a state in which only her material 
 needs seemed alive and keenly enjoying made it 
 easy for her to recover from the effect of Cowie's words. 
 She had felt indeed that she ought to be made ashamed 
 by them, rather than that she actually was so : it was 
 as if a drug had stupefied a part of her or a knife 
 removed it, and the mutilated body was living on, 
 eagerly eating and drinking and resting, with only 
 now and then a sleepy sense that something was gone. 
 Once in the night, in the time between waking and 
 sleeping, the thought had come to her that a world 
 that had finally flung away God might go on living 
 as she was doing. 
 
 A girl in a novel, marrying as she was doing, would, 
 she knew, have gone over the new house with " a sick 
 feigning " of interest. But she had taken pleasure in 
 it from the first in mental pictures of the rooms as 
 they would look when finished and in fancying com- 
 promises between her aesthetic sense and the landlord's 
 obstinacies regarding woodwork and cupboards and 
 wallpapers " contracted for for the whole land." Her 
 comfort-loving, intensely domestic nature exulted in 
 the prettiness, the cleanliness, the freedom from 
 associations : her cramped instincts for managing 
 and planning and tending expanded with a fresh hope 
 of realisation. Even the gas cooking-stove was quite 
 unlike that stove which the Trathbyes had hired, 
 long ago, from the Corporation ; which had been so 
 quarrelsomely cleaned, which had been so bitterly 
 charged (by Aunt Caroline) with having doubled the 
 gas accounts ; which had been finally given up by Mrs. 
 Trathbye, weeping, wounded, resentful, surmising 
 that Caroline hated the stove because its installation
 
 240 THE ROSE-COLOURED ROOM 
 
 had been her idea. Now Drusilla was looking at her 
 own stove, tall, glittering, with a spacious copper 
 boiler. There was no one save herself to empty or 
 fill that boiler ; no one to spill milk or leave saucepans 
 to boil over on the top of the stove ; no one to say, in 
 self-assertion : " Is it necessary to have that gas 
 burning so long ? . . . " With a sense of achievement 
 she opened and closed the heavily clutching door of 
 the oven ; she visualised pies and cakes on the shelves 
 her pies and her cakes, unmocked, unopposed, in a 
 splendid inviolability. As she raised her head her 
 face was flushed. 
 
 " Dearie " Cowie gasped, swooping down on her. 
 He embraced her tightly, and for a moment her eyes 
 were held by his, shining, jubilant, misted with tears. 
 . . . She freed herself and went into the bedroom : 
 where the drug was again in complete control as she 
 imagined her frocks hanging uncrushed in the new 
 wardrobe. 
 
 " It was nice of you, Alick," she said, gently praising 
 the whiteness. Even in the hall the woodwork was 
 white, and Cowie had remembered to get a white seat 
 built into the little recess : she had worked two 
 cushions for it to harmonise with the old-rose paper 
 on the walls. 
 
 " Isn't white the right thing for you ? " Cowie said. 
 " On the twentieth of June my bride ! . . ." 
 
 " Don't Alick ! You're hurting me." 
 
 Cowie mimicked her. 
 
 " Coquette ! " he said. 
 
 Mrs. Trathbye's opinion was that it would be wise 
 for Drusilla to be married in a nice costume and hat. 
 Aunt Caroline said that white silk would certainly 
 make her look very stout. But the Cowies were
 
 THE WHITE STUDIO 241 
 
 clamorous for a white wedding for the beautiful bride ; 
 and Mrs. Cowie asked to be permitted to supply 
 Drusilla's dress and veil. 
 
 " Doesn't she look a picture ? " Mrs. Cowie said 
 on the wedding morning. It was she who had fastened 
 the dress and set the veil and wreath on the glowing 
 hair. Mrs. Trathbye stayed in the other room ; and 
 Drusilla thought that this was a thing which, later, 
 would impress her as cruel and painful. But just 
 now the drugged sensation was so overwhelming that 
 she spoke of it to Essie. 
 
 " It's the excitement," Essie said tenderly. It was 
 strange to be hugged carefully, on account of the white 
 silk by her and Kathleen and to see them crying. 
 
 " There's the cab," Kathleen said chokingly. Mrs. 
 Trathbye rushed into the bedroom, pressed, sobbing, 
 against her daughter, kissing her greedily and noise- 
 lessly as a mother kisses a sleeping infant. 
 
 " Now God Almighty bless you. . . ." 
 
 Later, Drusilla and Cowie came out on to the sunlit 
 steps of the church. Drusilla knew that there was a 
 crowd of smiling faces about her and that she had a 
 smooth gold ring beside the diamond ring on her 
 finger. The calm sense of unreality held her strongly : 
 she noticed each face and figure near at hand, detach- 
 ing itself from the crowd ; and, with the same 
 dreaming composure, she recalled the china-like face 
 of the girl in the fog that afternoon in February. 
 She remembered having read somewhere that these 
 women nearly always drugged themselves in some 
 way or other so that what they did might not be 
 unendurable to them. . . . This, too, seemed a 
 thought that, coming to one awake, might seem 
 painful and significant. 
 
 Q
 
 242 THE ROSE-COLOURED ROOM 
 
 She passed, white, over the cardinal-red carpet ; 
 and the sun fell about her "tenderly as about a 
 helpless thing." 
 
 II 
 
 Michael Quentin and old Patullo came back to 
 Scotland in September ; and a few days later Michael 
 came to the Mission Rooms in Groome Street. 
 
 Miss Morland had met them at the station on the 
 day of arrival, and had seemed to Michael to be 
 improved in health and in dress. She was voluble in 
 her accounts of the work of the Mission and the Eire 
 Club : catching up one of Patullo's bags, she strode 
 along the thronged platform, now separated from 
 Michael and Patullo by intervening hurrying humans, 
 now lurching against a porter's barrow or sidling up to 
 a pair of strangers, then dashing away with an : "I 
 say ! Beg pardon ! " 
 
 " You'd better keep it till we get in somewhere," 
 Patullo said with an irritated laugh. It was a relief 
 to Michael, whom Miss Morland's shouting made 
 suffer : but he felt that Patullo was hardly glad to 
 see her. 
 
 At the Mission Rooms Miss Morland, not quite in- 
 curiously, spoke of the marriage of Drusilla and Cowie. 
 She had sent them a flower-pot, she said, and a fender- 
 stool, and she characteristically added that these 
 things were handsome and had cost a lot. The Eire 
 Club had given them a revolving bookcase. 
 
 " Very nice," Michael said. 
 
 Racie, engaged at the office, had not been able to 
 meet his friend on his home-coming : but he had 
 come that evening to the Mission Rooms. He stood
 
 THE WHITE STUDIO 243 
 
 looking at Miss Morland : pale, in his neat light 
 overcoat, his crush-hat held under his arm. He 
 showed nervousness when Miss Morland spoke of 
 Drusilla and Cowie. 
 
 " Do they still come to the meetings ? " Michael 
 asked. 
 
 " Oh, no, they've quite given us up ! " Miss Morland 
 said with her wearisome brightness. " They've got 
 other things to do." 
 
 Racie, smileless, began to tell Michael about the 
 public lectures last spring : they had been fairly 
 successful and Michael contemplated others, of more 
 importance, during the coming winter. His idea was 
 that the money obtained by these lectures, and the 
 club subscriptions, should be used for the expansion 
 of the Mission, which might, in time, be entirely 
 supported in such ways. . . . Michael and Racie 
 discussed it at Mrs. Wylie's that night, sitting late 
 over a fire. 
 
 " There's a plan come into my head " Michael 
 
 said. 
 
 Racie looked at him with an emotional amusement. 
 It was reassuring to hear Michael beginning to talk 
 rubbish about plans : for even Racie's resolve to be 
 sane and cynical could not resist the fact that Michael 
 was changed. How ? And had the prolongation of 
 his absence been due to a need more personal than the 
 healing of Patullo ? Racie tried to ascertain : but his 
 habit of arguing from conclusions instead of from 
 premises left him in a troubled nescience. 
 
 " What a fool that woman is ! " he said suddenly. 
 " Miss Morland, I mean." He felt a bitterness 
 against her, a fear of a certain thing that she might 
 repeat.
 
 244 THE ROSE-COLOURED ROOM 
 
 " Why ? " Michael asked : it occurred to Racie 
 that six months ago Mick would have rebuked him 
 for calling a lady a fool. 
 
 " She's so fearfully tactless . . . and boisterous. 
 Everybody gets sick of her. Even old Patullo was 
 half sick of her, I believe, before he left. So you're 
 quite contented with your success there ? " 
 
 " I hope it's all right," Michael said solemnly. 
 " I believe it is : the appetite seems to be gone. 
 Doesn't he look different ? " 
 
 " Wonderfully so," Racie said, encouraging. 
 
 " I shouldn't say Miss Morland was tiresome," 
 Michael went on. " She's curiously interesting to me, 
 in fact. So's Patullo ... I wonder if lives like theirs 
 haven't a quite special sort of significance." 
 
 " Lives . . . ? " 
 
 " Broken lives," Michael said. " Wasted lives, 
 as they're called. Lives that are smashed into 
 pieces." 
 
 Racie was moving uneasily, fearful of the turn that 
 the talk was taking. Why had he interrupted 
 Michael hi speech of his plan ? 
 
 " I don't see what reason you have for saying Miss 
 Morland's life has been smashed into pieces," he said 
 quizzically. 
 
 "Any one could see it," Michael said with a certitude 
 beyond contempt. " Any one that . . . knew any- 
 thing, I mean. . . . Never mind. Sometimes I 
 wonder if the souls of these people, on higher planes, 
 have consented to the sacrifice of their earthly lives 
 if they are offering them, broken up as they are, so 
 that they may be taken and other lives built up out 
 of them. . . . Patullo said once that men might make 
 the most wonderful and meaningful holy temple out
 
 THE WHITE STUDIO 245 
 
 of the broken pillars of old peoples. ... I feel 
 somehow as if Miss Morland and Patullo meant 
 something to my life. I shouldn't dare to despise 
 them. There's a kind of grandeur in having one's life 
 riven to pieces." 
 
 " Are you sure it isn't disintegration ? " Racie 
 asked. " The results, after a time, might look much 
 the same." He went on nervously, hi his fear for 
 Michael, gulping at the beginnings of words : " Besides 
 I thought you believed in mending broken lives, not 
 in swallowing them up. Isn't that what you've been 
 trying to do with Patullo ? " 
 
 " I suppose so," Michael said, with his peaceful 
 inconsistency. " I was thinking of Miss Morland 
 rather than of Patullo." 
 
 " You said Patullo, you know," Racie said. 
 
 "Well, I don't care," Michael said. "I haven't 
 developed the thought : I'm just chasing it. You 
 can consider an idea without nailing it down as your 
 creed. ... I mean, I've been wondering if sacrifice 
 isn't the very source of life, and if I'm not mistaken 
 in trying to make plans for bringing happiness to 
 people?" 
 
 " Ah, that's comprehensible," Racie said. " You 
 mean it's not worth while to patch the broken lives : 
 better to scrap them and make new ones." 
 
 " Journalese," Michael murmured. " I mean the 
 souls on a higher plane may use the apparent destruc- 
 tion of these earthly lives as the best way of serving 
 other lives. Perhaps there's a social meaning in 
 ' The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit . . . * 
 Some people seem to be used as finger-posts all along 
 the way of life." 
 
 " How not to do it ! " Racie murmured. " Poor
 
 246 THE ROSE-COLOURED ROOM 
 
 beggars. . . . You don't . . . ? " He looked up 
 scaredly. 
 
 " I don't mean myself," Michael said smiling. " A 
 man may make a lot of mistakes. . . . His life isn't 
 broken to pieces unless the basis of it is smashed." 
 
 " The basis of yours ? " Racie suggested. 
 
 " The basis of mine is faith in God," Michael said ; 
 " and the wish to do something for men. That 
 couldn't go to pieces, you know it couldn't. It's 
 an eternal basis. ... It couldn't be broken." 
 
 " Well, I'll take your word for it," Racie said with 
 a lightening of heart. It was a relief to find that 
 Michael was as much of a fool as ever. He could not 
 have cared for the girl. ... As for the unescapable 
 if undefinable changes in his face and voice Racie 
 tried to attribute these to travel, or a cold, or foolish 
 experiments in reformed diets. . . . Racie drank 
 another glass of wine, lighted another cigarette, and 
 snuggled down into the arm-chair with a delightful 
 sense of having got Michael back again. 
 
 " About your plan, Mick ? " 
 
 "Yes," Michael said. "Of course it isn't final. 
 It doesn't express any conviction to which I've 
 struggled. I told you just now I doubted if there were 
 any use in doing things until you're sure what you're 
 meant to do. . . . Only I've got the money and I 
 can't help trying to lessen human misery until I'm 
 told on good authority that misery brings the world 
 closer to God." 
 
 " If it does we must be bumping up against Him," 
 Racie said. 
 
 Michael laughed. " Perhaps we are," he said, with 
 his self-conscious intensity. " And we can't see Him 
 in the dark."
 
 THE WHITE STUDIO 247 
 
 " Well, Patullo isn't here to admire that figure so 
 tell me about your plan instead," Racie said. The 
 assurance that Michael had never been attracted by 
 the girl, that there had been absolutely nothing 
 mysterious between him and her, made it again 
 possible to laugh at Michael, to be rude to him. 
 
 Michael, pitching forward in his chair, linking his 
 hands about his knees, spoke eagerly of the plan. He 
 was going to buy a site somewhere, in town, and build 
 some ideal little dwellings for the poor people of the 
 Eire Mission. He must have the site in town because 
 so many of the people went to work. . . . He was 
 going to build baths, and a gymnasium and a day 
 nursery. 
 
 " You see, the conditions of my mother's will 
 prevent me from using my money for any political 
 purpose," Michael said ; " or I should do something 
 for Home Rule. ... I used to kick against the will, 
 but now I don't mind so much : I'm beginning to see 
 it's one's fellow-humanity, not one's fellow-nationality. 
 . . . Still, I think it's as well for me to begin with 
 the Eire : it's definite. ... I see now I've always 
 been expecting too much of people, and getting too 
 impatient when they didn't come up to my ideas. 
 I'll take time : I'll stick to the Eire and give them 
 a chance to shape." 
 
 " You're getting quite sensible," Racie said in his 
 appreciation of the Eire as contrasted with a love- 
 affair with Drusilla. 
 
 " I've often had thoughts of starting a Socialist 
 paper," Michael said, as if to disprove the state- 
 ment. 
 
 " Oh . . . guck ! . . . " Racie inarticulated. 
 
 " If I could get a good man to edit it for me,"
 
 248 THE ROSE-COLOURED ROOM 
 
 Michael said, looking at him with eyes full of an 
 indignant reproach. 
 
 Racie took out a copy of The Mercury. It contained 
 a short article of his and several paragraphs ; coldly 
 written, in the dullest, most formal newspaper lan- 
 guage that could express his self-contempt. 
 
 " Put that rag away ! " Michael cried. He caught 
 at it and they wrestled. Michael threw the paper 
 into the fire and leaned back, flushed, laughing on a 
 high note. 
 
 " There's only one other thing," Racie said, his 
 hand on the arm of his friend's chair. " The money 
 was fearfully muddled, you know. Is Patullo to have 
 it again ? . . . There was talk about him in the club : 
 they said he'd some drain on his resources a drunken 
 wife or something. . . ." 
 
 " It's all right," Michael said. " I think it would 
 be good for him it would keep up his self-respect." 
 
 " It's a temptation," Racie said. " If we have 
 those big lectures in public halls there'll be sums 
 passing through his hands. . . . You said he'd apply 
 to you if he wanted. . . . Men are queer beggars." 
 
 " Yes," Michael said angrily. " Some men are 
 queer. Some men struggle against friendship 
 Patullo's not like that. You mean he'd find it easier 
 to rob me than to ask me. ... I don't believe it." 
 
 Racie was silent, looking a little ashamed. Going 
 away, he mused on the extraordinary character of 
 Michael Quentin. Michael was changed : was the 
 change one of development, rather than of alteration ? 
 He seemed to have absorbed something, in truth, 
 from the broken life of Patullo or from . . . ? 
 
 Racie checked himself with an impatient shrug of 
 his shoulders. It had been a mistake of his about
 
 THE WHITE STUDIO 249 
 
 Miss Trathbye : it was ridiculous, in the face of such 
 strong evidence to the contrary, to allow that per- 
 sistent suspicion that there had been something 
 between Miss Trathbye and Michael. The thought 
 came again and again, a real thing putting to flight the 
 shifts and sophistries of his reasoning. Racie resolved 
 not to go to bed, but to write that article on the Irish 
 situation for The Mercury. He sat down by the 
 smoky fire in his sitting-room and wrote the title on 
 his block : 
 
 " Kerrymen and Derrymen." 
 
 He had meant to say that the struggle between the 
 north and south bade fair to become as poignant as 
 the proverbial conflict between the east and west. 
 He had meant to compare the Orange and Green to 
 the Kilkenny cats, and to suggest, jocularly, that the 
 residue of tail-tips would be as much as the Empire 
 would care to keep of both parties. Thorns might 
 make a cartoon embodying this figure. . . . Pyeugh ! 
 Any rotten rubbish would do for The Mercury, and the 
 rottener the better. He was going to knock the thing 
 off in twenty minutes. . . . 
 
 Twenty-five minutes passed. Racie, holding the 
 block inscribed with the words " Kerrymen and 
 Derrymen," had thought continuously of Michael 
 Quentin. It was not possible to predicate of Michael 
 that he would behave in such and such a fashion. 
 Remembering Michael's habitual politeness to God, 
 Racie smiled as he told himself that Michael might 
 be capable of offering God the fruits of a disappoint- 
 ment in love. The witticism seemed to demand 
 utterance, and Racie was irked by the fact that he 
 was alone.
 
 250 THE ROSE-COLOURED ROOM 
 
 III 
 
 Mrs. Wylie, talking with the extra garrulity proper 
 to the welcome of a home-comer, had lighted the gas 
 in Michael's bedroom, and pointed to two new picture 
 frames on the wall. 
 
 " My son Wilfrid made these, Mr. Quentin of 
 fir-cones and beech-nuts and acorns he's been 
 collecting." 
 
 " Very clever," Michael said, smiling. After Mrs. 
 Wylie had gone he stood, the smile on his lips, con- 
 sidering the hexagonal frames embossed with little 
 cones in a shining welter of varnish. He was sleepy 
 and not in a particularly sad mood : he believed that 
 the worst of the struggle was over the agony and 
 astonishment of those weeks immediately following 
 the news of Brasilia's engagement. He had con- 
 vinced himself (he thought) that he had made a mis- 
 take : Brasilia must love Cowie, however grotesque 
 and incredible it seemed. Michael had, in truth, 
 behaved somewhat in the fantastic fashion that Racie, 
 sarcastic, had surmised : he had tried to learn from 
 his loss : he believed that he had learned. He had 
 prayed for Brasilia : once or twice even, in a frenzy 
 of quixotry, he had sent up prayers for Alexander 
 Cowie. He had prayed that the love that he might 
 not pour out on a girl might be sanctified, might be 
 deepened and broadened into a great stream of pity 
 for suffering humanity. He said to himself with a 
 laugh that sorrow was meant to have a centrifugal, 
 not a centripetal, effect ; and with the return of the 
 power to smile at himself there had come a quietening 
 of his pulses. In the peace of his soul his sorrow 
 showed as a beautiful, holy thing. . . .
 
 THE WHITE STUDIO 251 
 
 Yet there had been a sense of disappointment when 
 Grace Morland had said that Brasilia and Cowie never 
 came to the Eire. 
 
 IV 
 
 At Lochaber Gardens Essie was sleeping alone in 
 the bed that she and Brasilia used to occupy. She 
 was roused by a sound in the room and looked up 
 uncomprehendingly into the face of her mother. 
 Mrs. Trathbye, in her grey-blue dressing-gown, was 
 carrying a taper. 
 
 " What's the matter ? " Essie complained. 
 
 " There's something most remarkable going on next 
 door," Mrs. Trathbye said with dramatic gestures 
 that spattered the taper's wax over the bedclothes. 
 
 " I wish you'd mind what you're doing, Mother," 
 Essie said. " And I wish you wouldn't come waking 
 me up this way. It's hard enough to get to sleep." 
 
 " Ah ! . . . " Mrs Trathbye uttered, reproachful ; 
 and went on with her incoherent statements. " The 
 noise and uproar was like nothing I've ever heard in 
 my life. Upon my honour, I was certain the house 
 was coming down and your aunt was nearly mad 
 with terror. . . ." 
 
 " What was it ? " Essie cried. 
 
 " Ah, how can I tell you what it was ? There's 
 something very far wrong at Patullo's. He looked so 
 decent when he came back I thought to myself: 
 ' That man's really going to try to change his life.' ' 
 
 " Oh, if he's drank, that's nothing," Essie said. 
 " But I didn't think he ever got noisy " 
 
 Kathleen suddenly cried out from the hall-door, 
 where she and Aunt Caroline were on their knees 
 peeping through the letter-box. Mrs. Trathbye
 
 252 THE ROSE-COLOURED ROOM 
 
 rushed excitedly from the room and Essie had to 
 resist an impulse to follow her. 
 
 " A funny-looking woman's come out of his house," 
 Kathleen said. " She distinctly said something about 
 Miss Morland." 
 
 Aunt Caroline contradicted. 
 
 " She did not. She said something about brown 
 holland." 
 
 Mrs. Trathbye hastened to the parlour window and 
 leaned out ; the figure of a woman, short and wide, 
 came quickly from the close and, with something 
 frantic in its gait, went down the street. Mrs. Trath- 
 bye was aware of Patullo, at his own oriel, pale-faced 
 in the darkness, watching the woman go. 
 
 " She wasn't happy at home," Miss Morland had 
 said to Racie and to many other people. This was 
 the thing that Racie feared that the fool of a woman 
 might repeat in Michael's presence. And there was 
 no knowing what effect it might have on Michael, 
 whose composition was an unknown thing. . . . 
 Racie cursed himself, wondered at himself, reassured 
 himself : but always there fluttered in his heart 
 those fears for Michael Quentin. 
 
 It was a comfort that, at the next few meetings of 
 the club, the woman was occupied in talking about 
 Patullo. Racie compared her to an over-full cup of 
 weak tea, slopping over into the saucer : she could 
 not help speech of what was in her mind : she risked 
 slander and derision to obtain a listener. 
 
 " Isn't it awful, Mick ? " she said to Michael. 
 " Mr. Patullo's wife has found him. Such an abomin-
 
 THE WHITE STUDIO 253 
 
 able woman. Oh, yes, I know her, I've seen her often 
 before ! She has found his address and she's been up 
 at his house several times ; and the other day she 
 came up when I was there and she made the most 
 awful row, and insulted me. I was amused. Isn't 
 it scrumptious ? . . . She said it wasn't proper for 
 me to be such good friends with Mr. Patullo ! . . . 
 Did you ever hear anything like it ? " 
 
 As Michael had heard things almost identical spoken 
 of Miss Morland's friendship with Patullo, he was 
 embarrassed. A flush rose in his face and he hung 
 his head. 
 
 " It's more money she wants, of course," Miss 
 Morland said. " It's just the hope that the fear of 
 disgrace before his pupils will make him pay her more. 
 Mr. Patullo told me he gave her more than he could 
 afford. . . . It's just blackmail." 
 
 At the Mission Rooms Michael heard Miss Morland 
 talking stridently to the expressionless Racie ; and 
 the word " blackmail " recurred wearisomely. It 
 wounded Michael that Patullo had not yet confided 
 in him about this matter. 
 
 " She's pretending now she was treated badly 
 about little Harry," Miss Morland said. " She never 
 loved him : why, Racie, he was the last of five and 
 nothing but her neglect killed all of them " 
 
 Racie gave her a side-glance. 
 
 " How do you know ? " he asked : but Miss Mor- 
 land went on, loud, virulent. 
 
 " I know all about their affairs : Mr. Patullo has 
 always confided in me : you know what a friendship 
 there's been between us. I feel so safe in a friendship 
 
 of that sort there's such a difference in our ages " 
 
 Racie's lips just tightened cynically : his opinion was
 
 254 THE ROSE-COLOURED ROOM 
 
 that Miss Morland was just now looking nearly as old 
 as Patullo, and he felt that she was despicable for 
 this. " He's always been so good to me with his 
 advice and sympathy not that I've ever been in a 
 position to need it," Miss Morland babbled. " My 
 life's been such a bright one so far. Still, he's been 
 like a father to me. . . ." 
 
 Racie, skilfully sidling along the room, managed to 
 shed Miss Morland on to a bench beside Michael. 
 She went on with hardly a pause : 
 
 " Upon my word, I think marriage is an awfully 
 wretched thing, don't you ? I wouldn't give up my 
 freedom : I feel sorry for girls when I hear they're 
 going to be married, and I'm sorrier still for men tied 
 to awful women like that. No sympathy ever 
 between them, nothing in common. . . ." 
 
 Michael had often heard Miss Morland express 
 these views on marriage : he smiled gently, chaffing 
 her a little, half listening while she ran on in her 
 broken inconsequent way, passionately, regarded by 
 round eyes and overheard by outraged ears. The 
 mission people, shawled and capped, were crowding 
 into the bright bare room. 
 
 " I wonder if Dillie Trathbye and Alick Cowie are 
 happy," Miss Morland's voice came. ..." I always 
 suspected she married him to get away from 
 home." 
 
 Racie and another man were moving the piano to 
 make room for the dance with which the evening was 
 to open. Michael was aware of the pianist, a plump 
 girl in white, removing a phenomenal number of 
 silver bangles. 
 
 " To get away . . . ? " he asked. 
 
 " Oh, she was wretched at home ! " Miss Morland
 
 THE WHITE STUDIO 255 
 
 vociferated. " Awfully unhappy. Her aunt's bed- 
 ridden now, they say ; but she was always a fearful 
 old person. She led Dillie such a life, she often used 
 to run up to my digs in tears. The mother was some- 
 thing of a Tartar too. Alick Cowie's often confided 
 in me about it : he said he was glad to get Dillie out 
 of the house, away from them all. . . . But it never 
 seemed to strike the poor boy she was marrying him 
 just to get away." 
 
 " Get away from what ? " 
 
 " Why, the Trathbyes are miserably poor," Grace 
 said, scornful. " Didn't you notice ? I was often 
 ashamed to go out with Dillie holes in her boots, 
 and all that sort of thing, and cheap rags on her. I 
 must say my friends are rather a smartly dressed 
 lot. . . I can always tell a girl who comes out of a 
 nice house." 
 
 " What was wrong ? . . . Her mother was very 
 fond of her . . ." Michael faltered. 
 
 " Her mother hated her," Miss Morland clashed out. 
 " Every one noticed it." 
 
 Racie had drawn nearer, and Michael was aware of 
 his dark figure, the regular motion of his arm, and the 
 white spray of the powdered wax he was scattering 
 on the floor. The pianist had set her cylinder of 
 bangles on the top of the piano, where they glinted. 
 The gaslights swayed in the gusts from the continuous 
 opening and closing of the door, and the green 
 draperies on the platforms and windows softly bellied 
 out and subsided. Michael nodded to Mrs. Quinn, 
 smiling in a group of friends : but the power to love 
 these people, the power to be interested in them, was 
 suddenly gone. It was as if an edifice which he had 
 built up patiently, with labour and sorrow and prayer,
 
 256 THE ROSE-COLOURED ROOM 
 
 had felt the blows of a fierce wind and had fallen, 
 huddling. His will had taken hold of his own life, 
 resolved to guide and use it : but the wind ! the 
 wind blew where it listed, and no man could stay its 
 breath. 
 
 It was not conscious pain that he felt : it was an 
 impulse so overwhelming that he did not know whether 
 it could be likened to gladness or to grief. He was 
 saying to himself that he must see Drusilla and know 
 the truth. The idea of sitting through the long 
 programme of efforts to " bring people together " 
 did not present itself to him as intolerable and 
 impertinent : he simply ignored it. 
 
 Racie was furtively glancing at his friend. He knew 
 what that silly old thing had been saying to Michael. 
 Why, she never mentioned an engaged or married 
 couple without doubting the purity of their motives, 
 the compatibility of their temperaments. . . . But 
 how could one make Michael Quentin see that ? 
 
 " Miss Morland I think every one's ready for the 
 dance," Racie said, his habitual dryness almost 
 kindling into unpleasantness. He resentfully watched 
 her slouching into the middle of the floor, clapping 
 her hands and bawling out : " Now, good people ! " 
 She taught the steps awkwardly and uncertainly, 
 with blunderings, with an amateur's destructive 
 criticism. What an amateur she was in everything ! 
 in life itself ! Yet Michael Quentin's judgment 
 
 " No wonder the School Board won't give her a 
 berth," Racie murmured. " All private schools she 
 teaches in um ? Mick, if you want the thing to go, 
 you ought to get another instructor. You could keep 
 her as an assistant to save her feelings." 
 
 Michael looked at him : it was disturbing to Racie
 
 THE WHITE STUDIO 257 
 
 to realise that the words had not impressed his 
 friend's consciousness. 
 
 ; ' Where are you going ? " Racie asked with some- 
 thing of fierceness. 
 
 " Out of this," Michael answered with his simple 
 truthfulness. " I must get thinking." 
 
 VI 
 
 He must see Drusilla : he must know the truth. 
 . . . Had he not always known it ? Had there not 
 always been a deep place in his heart where, beyond 
 the reach of reason and righteousness, unconquered, 
 there had crouched the conviction that she did not 
 love Cowie ? 
 
 She did not love Cowie : she could not : it was a 
 thought too incredible for complete faith even in 
 Michael's moments of highest altruism, of humblest 
 submission. Since there was a spark of the Divine 
 in all men there must be one in Cowie : Michael did 
 not deny this : all that he could assert was that he 
 had never seen this spark and he did not believe that 
 Drusilla had seen it. 
 
 He had told himself, struggling with his first agonies 
 and astonishments, that he ought to be glad that her 
 love had fallen like a light on Alexander Cowie's life, 
 illuming and blessing it. A nature as base and vile 
 as Cowie's had just this paramount need of a sign 
 so dazzling and undeniable of God's existence. He 
 had argued with himself that love at its noblest was 
 not an exchange affected between two equals ; not 
 even the flooding together of two lives passionately 
 sympathetic. No : the highest love was that which 
 he had recognised in the days when he had thought
 
 258 THE ROSE-COLOURED ROOM 
 
 only of the love of God ; a rapture of giving, of helping 
 and saving ; pitiful, unrecking, eternal. He had 
 told himself that perhaps only a wretch like Cowie 
 could bring such a love showering down from a noble 
 woman's heart. ... As for himself, he had faith and 
 hope : he could learn to climb, patiently and not 
 unhappily, alone : he could learn to bend to give a 
 hand to those weaker. He had never yielded to the 
 thought that his life would be broken : it could not 
 be even lonely with the sense that she was working 
 by his side, seeking to bless one man's life while he 
 blessed many. 
 
 But suppose he had been mistaken about her ? 
 He had often made mistakes about people. Suppose 
 this supreme love, too, had been fostered and fed by 
 imaginings ? Suppose she had not understood or had 
 understood only a little. . . . 
 
 Oh, God ! Had there been a moment in which she 
 had needed his help ? Might he have saved her ? . . . 
 It was a thing of which he was afraid to think. 
 
 " I must see her," he said to himself again. " Then 
 I'll know. I must know." He had no reflections on 
 what might follow, and no consciousness of the exact 
 state of his feelings towards her. He did not feel that 
 she was lower than he had thought, nor did he seek 
 for justifying explanations of her action. He felt as 
 if he were waiting, tensely, for a message, the tre- 
 mendous significance of which annulled all inter- 
 vening thought and held all future action dependent. 
 He must know. 
 
 He resolved not to go down to Fauldstane. In two 
 days there was to be a meeting of the Eire Club ; and, 
 if he went about town, he might meet her somewhere. 
 ... If he did not, and if she and Cowie did not come
 
 THE WHITE STUDIO 259 
 
 to the meeting of the club, he would write to them, 
 regretting their absence and specially inviting them 
 to attend at the next lecture. Then (he thought) he 
 could go back to The Corner House and begin to study 
 again in the white studio. 
 
 He went about town but he met neither Drusilla 
 nor Cowie. He did not expect to see them at the club 
 meeting : so he spent the afternoon of that day in 
 writing to them, and went to the club-rooms with the 
 letter in his pocket. 
 
 It was a warm night and Burke Place was of a blue- 
 black darkness with here and there the long shaken 
 reflection of a gas-lamp seeming to go quivering down 
 into the deeps of the pavement. There was a little 
 pool in each of the concave steps and the old-fashioned 
 rain-misted lamp, elbowing out above the doorway, 
 made a blurred wash of golden Light. . . . And 
 suddenly, heart-breakingly, there lived again that 
 other moist blue night of more than a year ago, with 
 the scurr of the match, and the scent of the rose, and 
 the sweet expectant voice calling . . . calling. 
 
 Calling for what ? For the things that a woman 
 needed most and a man could give. For a home and 
 food and clothes and tendance in sickness ? For the 
 glory of Love and the finding of God. 
 
 Michael saw a woman standing on the highest of 
 the steps. She closed her umbrella, and the misted 
 golden lamp-light suffused her hair disordered under 
 a velvet cap. 
 
 " Let me take your cloak," Michael said. She 
 let it fall from her shoulders as their clasped 
 hands quickly loosed. Michael stood for a moment 
 seeing the lovely face that the faithless soul had 
 betrayed.
 
 260 THE ROSE-COLOURED ROOM 
 
 VII 
 
 " Going to be nobody but werselves ? " Cowie said. 
 He had come in his shirt-sleeves into the parlour, 
 where Drusilla sat at her writing-table. Lately Cowie 
 had begun to wear the medical tall hat and frock- 
 coat ; and he was obliged to take care of these 
 sombre signals of prosperity, removing the coat as 
 soon as he came indoors. He wriggled into a trim 
 jacket. 
 
 " Did you post-card Aggie to come over to you 
 to-night?" Cowie asked. He had joined a local 
 orchestra in which he led the violins, and it met for 
 practice every Thursday. 
 
 " No. I knew she couldn't come," Drusilla said, 
 with her pretty smile. " You needn't worry about 
 me, Alick thanks. ... If I'm very lonely I can go 
 to the Eire this is the night for it, and Miss Morland's 
 always asking me to come." 
 
 Cowie sat silent for a minute ; then said : 
 
 " I wish you'd drop that woman. She's spoken 
 about. . . . You'd be just as well not to invite her 
 to your house." 
 
 " I don't invite her : she comes," Drusilla said 
 with a laugh. " I don't like her really, Alick and 
 I don't think she likes me. Only she's lonely 
 and . . ." 
 
 " I know, bless you ! " Cowie said contritely. " I 
 wisht I'd a nater like yours, Dillie." 
 
 " Don't be silly," Drusilla said. " I thought . . ." 
 
 " Poetry," Cowie said. " What did you think ? " 
 
 " I thought I'd just go to this meeting of the Eire, 
 or to the next, and tell Grace Morland, and the rest 
 of them, I'm not going to go any more."
 
 THE WHITE STUDIO 261 
 
 " Funny notion, going to tell them you're not 
 going," Cowie chaffed. " Why shouldn't you go ? " 
 he went on argumentatively. " There's no two 
 doubts you were in your element there ; and it's a 
 resource for you : it will keep you from missing me 
 so much when I'm at the orchestra. It's whole- 
 some for husband and wife to have some interests 
 that are not quite identical. I shouldn't expect 
 you to make yourself into a mere reflection of A lick 
 Cowie. . . . Don't let that fellow Tunstall see you 
 home." 
 
 " Why shouldn't he ? " Drusilla asked with a little 
 cascade of laughter. She had not spoken to Tunstall 
 half a dozen times, but she found him useful in modi- 
 fying Cowie's tendency to underrate her attractiveness 
 to other men. Was it not a policy rather than a 
 tendency ? She was beginning to understand that 
 Cowie's jealousy must soothe itself with denials of 
 what showed in other men's eyes. ..." Tunstall 
 told Kitty Curwen at the Eire that I had grown more 
 beautiful than ever," she said mischievously. 
 
 " Well, I'm surprised at him saying that," Cowie 
 said, an uneasy flush in his cheek. It was one of his 
 likeable characteristics that he responded so artlessly 
 to attempts to annoy him. 
 
 "Oh, Alick!" Drusilla exclaimed. "Don't you 
 think I'm beautiful ? " 
 
 " Not in the ordinary sense," Cowie said evasively. 
 " Of course I'd rather have your face than the face 
 of any beauty on earth. ... All I meant was, I 
 shouldn't expect a fellow like Tunstall to admire you 
 I'd have thought he'd go in for a style more brilliant 
 and striking than yours. Beauty is largely a question 
 of taste. That is so. Still there is a pretty generally
 
 262 THE ROSE-COLOURED ROOM 
 
 accepted standard by which the Man in the Street 
 forms his judgments." 
 
 " Mr. Chairman ! " Drusilla gibed with another 
 little cascade of laughter. " It's a wonder you don't 
 address me as ' Mr. Chairman.' ' 
 
 " I will if you like," Cowie said, smiling, as he began 
 to read a paper. Presently he glanced across at her 
 and saw that she was (as he thought) looking into a 
 mirror which hung opposite to the writing-table. 
 And he smiled again, tenderly, at her feminine weak- 
 ness and his own comprehension of her thoughts. 
 
 " Never mind, Dillie dear, you'll always seem 
 prettier than any one else to me. . . ." 
 
 " Ah ? " Drusilla uttered vaguely ; and he smiled 
 again, a little annoyedly. She was pretending not to 
 hear because he had made her angry. She was very 
 vain and sensitive to his criticisms. 
 
 Drusilla was thinking as she sat at the writing-table. 
 It was a fortnight since that evening on which she 
 had met Michael on the steps of the Eire Club rooms. 
 She had not meant to go again ... it might be wise, 
 however, to go with Miss Morland to-night and to 
 make it plain that she was leaving the club. Alick's 
 orchestra was a sufficient explanation people ex- 
 pected married couples to behave in a stupid way. . . . 
 
 There were only lectures and the reading of manu- 
 scripts at the Eire ; it was improving : the worst 
 obscurantists were leaving it. Alick could not go to 
 it now on account of his orchestra : he was eager, 
 since their marriage, that they should join a church ; 
 and his energies would overflow into the various 
 tributary societies. . . . Well, there was no harm in 
 acknowledging that Alick had never understood the 
 aims of the Eire Club. He had said himself just now
 
 THE WHITE STUDIO 263 
 
 that it was right for husbands and wives to recognise 
 differences in their tastes. 
 
 Only lectures and the reading of manuscripts : 
 practically no social intercourse. Tunstall had seen her 
 home the last night, and would probably do so again. 
 Hardly the touching of hands, hardly the exchange of 
 a glance ! She was a married woman ; and she was 
 Irish though her husband wanted to forget this 
 and in sympathy with the objects of the club. Why 
 should not her intellectual life receive the stimulus 
 of the club meetings ? 
 
 She had better not go. It would not be safe. 
 
 It was a terrible word to say to oneself : it implied 
 a terrible possibility. She was asleep but she might 
 wake, and already her sleep was overshadowed by the 
 terror of that awakening. 
 
 Suppose that one of those women who had sold 
 themselves and were living in sin the sort of woman 
 from whom Cowie protected her suppose that such 
 a woman woke up and knew her life and could not 
 drug herself again into drowsiness ? It would make a 
 good subject for a tragedy. 
 
 She wondered that she should have this thing in 
 her thoughts while, exteriorly, everything looked so 
 ordinary. She sat at the fumed oak writing-table 
 which had been the wedding gift of the Eire Club : 
 she wore a dress which was a mixture of old rose and 
 grey, and on her wrist shone a gold bracelet which 
 Cowie had given her. Alick himself by the fire lay 
 back in an arm-chair which was a wedding-gift ; and 
 his slippered feet were gently kicking the brass and gun- 
 metal coal-box, also a wedding-gift. Between Drusilla 
 and her husband the tea-table stood : Cowie liked a 
 " sitting-down tea " and the table was daintily crowded
 
 264 THE ROSE-COLOURED ROOM 
 
 with cakes and breads and preserves, with wedding-gift 
 electro-plate, silver, and linen, and with a hair-raising 
 white silk tea-cosy, ribbon-worked by Cowie's aunt in 
 the Hebrides. . . . The china cupboard was close at 
 hand, with its supply of bridal cups and saucers, for 
 the bright little house was subject to many callers. 
 
 They had had a honeymoon in the south of England, 
 first in lodgings in a red cottage covered with yellow 
 roses, then in a big white boarding-house staring at 
 the sands, then in London with Cowie's cousins. All 
 the time, and since* their coming home, there had been 
 an amazing plenty of money. As many stamps as 
 Drusilla wanted came quietly from Cowie's pocket : 
 her own new purse was a strange sight, with its 
 twinkle of silver and gold : tradesmen came to her 
 door and she bought so many meats and vegetables 
 and cakes that it was surprising at the end of the week 
 to find that she had kept well within the sum allotted 
 to her by Cowie, and to hear his loving praises of her 
 management. He would hardly allow her to spend 
 her own pocket-money : if she went shopping he 
 insisted on paying her back for this or that little 
 article. " I ought to have got it for you before," he 
 always said. It seemed to her that they were always 
 going to theatres, or picture-palaces, or to " parties " at 
 the houses of Cowie's friends. Their own house, cared 
 for by a maid who seemed superfluous to Drusilla, 
 was in a dazzling state of cleanliness, a fairy-tale-like 
 readiness at all hours for the reception of visitors. 
 
 " It doesn't seem real," Drusilla said to Essie. 
 " It's all like a dream." Alick certainly pressed the 
 claims of his relatives more urgently than those of 
 hers : but, with his kindly decency, he always wel- 
 comed the Trathbyes. It was disappointing to
 
 THE WHITE STUDIO 265 
 
 Drusilla that the new house was not so useful to them 
 as she had hoped that it would be : they showed a 
 disposition to resent the new furniture and dresses, 
 the troops of Cowies and Cowies' friends. " I don't 
 go where I'm not wanted," Aunt Caroline said. 
 
 A bright little flat with a handsome young couple 
 in it ! The scenery of the dream was commonplace, 
 and so perhaps were the incidents. In the mornings, 
 when Drusilla was helping the maid, the flat was often 
 full of sunshine ; and she used to pause at her open 
 windows full of greenery to listen to the Frenchwoman 
 who lived above singing to her baby. Drusilla did a 
 good deal of dressmaking and was having music 
 lessons ; and these, with the preparing of dinner, 
 filled the morning hours and often the greater part of 
 the afternoon. But she went out regularly, for Cowie 
 was exigent about her health. In all her comings 
 and goings, her uprisings and down-lyings, she was 
 lapped about with his love and care, his praises and 
 censures, his restrictions and jealousies. . . . How 
 could the dream be called an ugly one ? 
 
 Only the awakening had the power of giving this 
 dream a hideous significance. And since she had 
 seen Michael Quentin on the steps of the Eire Club 
 rooms she had known that there was a danger that 
 she might awake. . . . The knowledge had already 
 troubled her dreaming, which showed broken, fan- 
 tastic, faintly coloured. 
 
 " Well, I'll go to-night," Drusilla said, rising. 
 " But what am I to do if Tunstall insists ? " 
 
 She rang for tea. It was one of the interesting 
 things in the dream that she could ring to summon a 
 maid ; and another was that, by raising or lowering a 
 pin, she could flood her rooms with light or darkness.
 
 266 THE ROSE-COLOURED ROOM 
 
 VIII 
 
 Cowie's jealousy troubled him so much during the 
 orchestra practice that at half-past nine he rose, 
 resolved that he would go to the Eire and escort 
 Drusilla home. 
 
 " Going, Alick ? " the conductor said in disgust. 
 " Augh, that's no a way to do ! A nice show we'll 
 make on the night of wer concert if this is all the 
 enthusiasm we can get up among us " 
 
 " Oh, cheese it ! " Cowie said, and smiled at the 
 appreciative laughter of the other members. " You 
 know that nobody can be more depended on than I 
 to do my best for the band," he added solemnly. 
 " If regularity of attendance is any criterion, I may 
 claim, I believe, to be as enthusiastic as any one here. 
 . . . But I've an engagement." 
 
 " Don't you know the poor chap's married ? " the 
 French horn said. The young men in the orchestra 
 were mostly friends of Cowie, had stood chatting 
 at street corners with him, been his companions 
 at football matches and in long country walks on 
 Sundays. 
 
 " Ay we must make allowances," the conductor 
 said ; and Cowie, laughing and blushing, ran down- 
 stairs, a little shamefaced at his own uneasiness. 
 He allowed to himself that he was leaving early 
 partly because he had ruffled Dillie a little at tea time. 
 Of course he had been sincere in what he had said 
 about her beauty ! She was ridiculously adorably 
 vain ; and it was absurd to consider herself fair in all 
 men's eyes. 
 
 The town was crowded, the cars singularly un- 
 suitable. When Cowie escaped from out of the bright
 
 THE WHITE STUDIO 267 
 
 tangle of lights and noises into the dimness of Burke 
 Place, he found that the meeting was over. The 
 figures of the black-dressed woman and her stout 
 companion were visible to him, on the far side of the 
 place, and their voices came to him : 
 
 "... Fed up wi' that. Agh, folks want some- 
 thing a bit livelier . . . ask Mr. Tunstall to propose 
 to the committee they should get Dr. Cowie to give 
 us a paper." 
 
 " On ' Humour ' ? Oh, the very thing . . . nothing 
 but empty benches if yon's to go on." 
 
 " Isn't it awful about Patullo ? . . . Agh, anybody 
 but him 'ud 'ave known. You can't . . ." 
 
 " Cure it." Cowie fancied rather than heard the 
 last words as the women rounded a corner. He was 
 keenly interested in local gossip and regretted that 
 he was not with the women to question them about 
 Patullo. So the old fellow was back at his old games ! 
 But Cowie's grimness was touched by a compassion 
 that would not have lighted it a few months ago. 
 He felt subconsciously sorry for every one who was 
 not young and healthy and good-looking and newly 
 married to Drusilla. 
 
 There was a quick light step on the pavement 
 behind him. 
 
 " Good evening, Dr. Cowie," Michael Quentin said 
 with that recently acquired calmness of his. 
 
 Cowie greeted him with an eagerness which owed 
 something to that same subconscious sense of his own 
 unequalled good fortune. He felt faintly sorry for 
 Michael and faintly ashamed of his own little triumphs 
 at the Eire. 
 
 " Glad to see you, Mr. Quentin. How's the club 
 getting on ? "
 
 268 THE ROSE-COLOURED ROOM 
 
 Michael would have passed away from him after 
 a few questions and answers and a few words 
 of courteous congratulation, but Cowie kept by his 
 side. 
 
 " I came up to look for my wife, but I'm afraid 
 I've missed her." 
 
 Michael explained that he did not know exactly 
 when Drusilla left the rooms, nor with whom : they 
 debouched into the clangour and the web of lights of 
 a thoroughfare ; and suddenly Racie Moore ran past 
 them. 
 
 " Accident," Racie panted. " Car ran off and into 
 another." 
 
 " Any one hurt ? " Michael asked. 
 
 " Lady killed, they say," Racie said, and ran on. 
 
 " These newspapers dehumanise people . . . " 
 Michael was beginning : he stopped at the sight of 
 Cowie's white face. 
 
 " I heard some one say just now it was a car going 
 south," Cowie said, and began to walk hurriedly. 
 
 Michael had no such fear : rather, he was convinced 
 that, if any accident happened to Drusilla, he would 
 at once know of it. He believed this in spite of the 
 proofs that he had had that silence and distance 
 could build up lying barriers between them that they 
 were as piteously at the mercy of material things as 
 were the rest of mankind. He believed it as lovers 
 believe with a certainty of knowledge that flouts 
 experience and ignores reason. 
 
 Cowie began to run, his hands in the pockets of his 
 overcoat, his bowler hat on the back of his head. 
 Michael, running too, was thinking Cowie's thoughts 
 and sharing his feelings. One of his exalted moods 
 had come to Michael : he had risen beyond the limits
 
 THE WHITE STUDIO 269 
 
 of his own personality and that of his companion : 
 he had attained to that perfect sympathetic insight 
 for which he had prayed. Just now Alexander 
 Cowie's love and anxiety were engrossing things, 
 demanding the attention of God and man. 
 
 " I wasn't quite kind to her this afternoon," Cowie 
 confessed, as if to propitiate fate. 
 
 When they reached the scene of the accident they 
 saw that the long procession of lighted and coloured 
 cars was slowly moving on. They were told that one 
 elderly lady had been killed and two young ladies, 
 hurt, had been carried to the Royal Infirmary. 
 Racie Moore, about to dash off to the office of The 
 Mercury, stopped with reassuring descriptions of the 
 injured. 
 
 " Then where is she ? " Cowie said with a con- 
 tentious air. 
 
 " Better take a southern car home and see," 
 Racie suggested, with his nearest approach to a laugh. 
 
 Michael went with Cowie to the new tenement in 
 the muddy new road. They entered the close, prettily 
 tiled with new " art " tiles, heliotrope and green ; 
 brightly lighted with an electric lamp. 
 
 " Why, there she is ! " Cowie exclaimed, dart- 
 ing in. 
 
 Drusilla in her violet costume, her black velvet cap, 
 muff, and stole, stood at the door : she looked tired 
 and cold. 
 
 " Tunstall took me and the Curwens home in his 
 motor," she explained. " I've just got back. . . . 
 You don't mind, do you ? " 
 
 Mind ! Cowie must clasp her tightly for a moment. 
 
 " Quentin's there," he said apologetically. " I 
 thought you were in that accident." . . .
 
 270 THE ROSE-COLOURED ROOM 
 
 He felt Drusilla tear herself from his arms. 
 
 " Let me go," she said with a hushed violence. 
 For the moment he felt resentment, then he exulted 
 in her delicacy. 
 
 Michael had gone to the opening of the close, and 
 Cowie followed him and asked him to come in. 
 
 " I I will," Michael said after a long pause. 
 Cowie was amused by the hesitation, the stammer, the 
 awkwardness. Queer chap . . . poor chap ! Cowie 
 felt rather sorry for Michael Quentin. . . . 
 
 Michael entered the little parlour, bright with 
 electric light and wedding-gifts, and sat down to 
 supper at Cowie's table. 
 
 IX 
 
 From The Corner House, through the trees in their 
 November bareness, the sea could be seen : sunlit, 
 riotous, foaming, peacock-blue streaked with viridian 
 green, against a curving strip of blond sand. The 
 range of dimpled hills inland beyond Fauldstane were 
 capped with blue-white snow ; and their slopes, of 
 the golden-green of withered grass, glistened in the 
 sunshine. 
 
 Michael, who had been walking about since early 
 in the morning, came into the house at noon. The 
 rooms glowed with colour and light and in the orange- 
 and-white dining-room the table was set. Michael 
 said that he did not want luncheon till one ; and 
 Mattie, contemptuous, replaced the frugal dishes in 
 the oven. 
 
 " Cookannousekeeper here doesn't mean much but 
 just housekeeper," Mattie said. " There's no support 
 in these rubbish he eats now. I wonder it doesn't
 
 THE WHITE STUDIO 271 
 
 make him hungry to smell the good butcher-meat 
 cooking for us. ... But you can't smell anything in 
 this house, it's built such a funny way. The smells 
 don't seem to hang in it the way they ought." 
 
 " He looks all right," the housemaid said, glancing 
 up from a " Pansy Novel." " And he eats all right. 
 He's thin, but he's such a nice fresh colour." 
 
 ' Well, anybody 'ud have a colour rushing about in 
 that wind all day," Mattie said. . . . " It's a kind of 
 emptiness there's in his life, I'm thinking. My, any 
 young man with his money might do such a lot of 
 good on the committees of societies for helping folks." 
 
 " It's a wonder he doesn't get married," the house- 
 maid said thoughtfully. ..." Everybody wouldn't 
 please him, I suppose . . . and he'll not be able to get 
 quit of the thought of the dead young lady. Poor 
 soul ! There he is going up the stairs now." 
 
 " It's all rubbish you're thinking about the young 
 lady," Mattie said, with a laugh. " You're that 
 sentimental. He just goes in there to read. My, 
 it would be the making of him if he'd the gumption to 
 fall in love with a woman." 
 
 The sun was right above in a hollow inlaid with 
 masses of gold-white clouds ; and the ulterior of the 
 white studio, with no curtains dropped within its 
 dome of glass, was of an almost intolerable radiance. 
 The white walls, the white floor and furniture seemed 
 to quiver : a little lump of clay from a boot, a fallen 
 petal, would have been weighed upon by the full load 
 of that cataract of light falling sheer from the height 
 of heaven and flooding the level of the floor. There 
 was not a stray flower-petal, not a morsel of clay, 
 not a cylinder of dust : the radiance, hungry for a 
 break in the colourlessness, seized on the crimsons
 
 272 THE ROSE-COLOURED ROOM 
 
 and carmines and pinks of the mass of roses on the 
 white and silver inlaid table : and searched out every 
 detail of the rood with its black cross and the flaccid 
 figure slung upon it. 
 
 So, in the awful brightness, Michael's tortured heart 
 lay before God ; and his lips tried to say as those 
 divine lips had said : " Not my will be done but 
 God's." 
 
 This archetype of man had suffered for the sake of 
 his fellow-men. Recognising that life is a perpetual 
 strife in which each man must be the conqueror or the 
 conquered he had renounced the baseness of success. 
 His image hung there proud, triumphant, scornful, 
 an eternal reality. His great struggle was being 
 repeated on a lesser scale in the life of every human 
 being. 
 
 To suffer or to let another man suffer ? . . . 
 Michael could no longer consider Cowie superficially 
 as a bounder, a Glasgow dandy, full of jests, of tags, 
 of popular songs, of football enthusiasm. It was not 
 possible even to think of Cowie as the phantom cham- 
 pion of all the smoke-like shapes of materialism as 
 opposed to the shining verities of faith. The struggle 
 between him and Cowie was no longer the conflict of 
 ideas : it was no longer a wide, vaguely seen battle 
 of mustering legions and flaunting banners. . . . The 
 lists must be narrow now : the fight must be fierce : 
 the two combatants, alone, must meet eye to eye, for 
 life or for death. It was the old struggle between 
 two men for a woman's love. 
 
 Strange how it sucked in and held all the meanings 
 of all things past and hereafter to come. All of a 
 man's strength, all of his knowledge, all of his loves, 
 all of his faith ! Everything that a man knew of God
 
 THE WHITE STUDIO 278 
 
 seemed hardly enough to help him now ; everything 
 of patience that the saints had won for their fellows 
 by batterings at the doors of heaven ; everything of 
 wisdom for which students had watched and waited. 
 
 " Centripetal ! " Michael said to himself and smiled. 
 
 Cowie loved her ; and, while it still seemed in- 
 credible to him that she should love Cowie, in the full 
 sense, Michael could see now that Cowie was not 
 unworthy of being loved. His soul was at a much 
 lower stage of development : hers must always stoop 
 to its unconscious aspirations : but for this very 
 reason was she not precious to Cowie ? He needed 
 her, he himself did not know how much, nor why. 
 In this ministry her own soul might reach its highest 
 development : she might come to love her husband 
 with a great love, tender, such as a mother feels for a 
 child, or a human for an animal. . . . And she was 
 bound to Cowie by promises spoken in God's name. 
 She had taken his happy, contented, unaspiring life 
 into her hands and warmed it and made it tremble, 
 so that it could never again be quite untroubled. 
 She had no right to lay it down : the very things that 
 Cowie lacked, his unlikenesses to her, were the fibres 
 of his claim upon her. . . . 
 
 Did she love Michael ? Oh, yes yes ! God knew 
 she did even if she did not know it herself. But the 
 whiteness of love must not be fouled by cruelty to 
 another man. Let her love stay hidden in the holy 
 place of her innermost heart : let God know it and 
 bless it : let it wait till the barriers of sense were down 
 and their two souls met, in the full light, on a higher 
 plane their two real selves who belonged to each 
 other. Here on the physical plane, she was weak : 
 she was blinded, enfeebled, weighed upon by material 
 
 s
 
 274 THE ROSE-COLOURED ROOM 
 
 things. She had yielded, he did not know why ; 
 perhaps to a false standard of duty to her family, 
 perhaps to a call to her senses. She had yielded, it 
 did not matter how nor why. The soul that he loved 
 was eternal and unyielding : what did her body 
 matter to him ? . . . 
 
 Michael dropped on his knees, burying his face in 
 the roses, vivid, wet, with here and there specklings 
 of wet clay. . . . The scent of her hair, the gleams 
 and glooms in it, the colour of her cheeks flooding into 
 the whiteness of her temples, the warm half-hidden 
 neck, the bright mouth ! 
 
 He prayed that he might be given strength to endure 
 anything rather than to hurt a fellow-man ; and that 
 the woman whom he loved might be kept from sin. 
 He was afraid of himself. . . . 
 
 With God all things were possible. . . . 
 
 " He's come down," Mattie said ; " and he says 
 he'll have a cup of tea. I'm glad he's given in, for 
 he's given up tea ever since he came home. He's 
 looking tired. You can't live without tea. There's 
 no sense in folks setting theirselves things to do that 
 they know are impossible."
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 THE ROSE-COLOURED ROOM 
 
 ON an evening near the beginning of February, 
 Michael and Brasilia crossed Burke Place in a flutter 
 of fine snow. The flakes, enlarging, melted on their 
 warm faces and congregated in white smears on their 
 unsheltered heads and shoulders. An empty taxi-cab 
 purred past them. 
 
 " Let's excuse me," Michael uttered. Charac- 
 teristically he had let the cab run past before he hailed 
 it. It pulled up and the driver leaned down, his 
 coat-collar edge pressing into his red cheek. 
 
 " Fifteen Ainslie Street, please," Michael said. 
 
 The flakes came no longer in a flutter, but in a 
 whirl ; and over the city there was that hush that 
 snow weather brings. 
 
 " Snow always makes you feel very young, doesn't 
 it ? " Drusilla said. " It always brings me back to 
 Hans Andersen. Kay and Gerda, you know, and the 
 roses, and the Snow Queen coming on her sled. It's 
 the most wonderful wintry thing." 
 
 " Yes," Michael said. " Fairy-tales are always so 
 awfully true. That's why I wonder that people can 
 be bothered reading other things." 
 
 Cowie was ashamed of Drusilla if she read fairy 
 and ghost stories : he resented it as an affectation of 
 childishness unbecoming in a fine intelligent married 
 woman. 
 
 " I knew you were fond of it," Drusilla said to 
 
 275
 
 276 THE ROSE-COLOURED ROOM 
 
 Michael. " It's the loveliest thing. And the 
 end . . ." 
 
 Suddenly Michael put his arm round her. They 
 sat, close together, warm, in a certain safe happiness. 
 
 The cab crossed Jamaica Bridge and they saw, 
 dimly, on their left, lights spangling the river, the long 
 indigo mass of Carlton Place and the delicate spire of 
 Gorbals Church. They thought of the bridge and the 
 wharves in the day-time with the facing crowds 
 struggling northwards and southwards, with the over- 
 loaded horses struggling up the paved slopes from the 
 piers. . . . Night and the snow had taken it all and 
 made it beautiful : as Love had taken all the world. 
 Even the tenements were looming blue-black palaces 
 with tinsel windows and walls that mounted into 
 mystery. The electric cars rushed by, coloured, 
 radiant, triumphant, humming the burden to a great 
 song. They were alive in a fairy-tale which ignored 
 painful standards of right and wrong. 
 
 " I'm glad it's a taxi-cab," Drusilla said. 
 
 " Yes," Michael said. " It can't be cruel to keep 
 the electricity out late." He laughed his high-pitched 
 gleeful laugh. " I always use taxis," he went on, 
 grave. " I'd be glad to see no horses in the streets 
 . . . and fewer people far fewer ; and all of them 
 handsome and straight with clear skins and well- 
 shaped heads." 
 
 " People must be meant to be like that," Drusilla 
 said. " Everything must be meant to be all right. 
 They must be meant to be happy not to bother 
 about being good." 
 
 They passed a place where road-menders were at 
 work and the interior of the carriage was lit by the 
 golden flare of naphtha torch-lights spouting from
 
 THE ROSE-COLOURED ROOM 277 
 
 their tall posts. Brasilia's face showed, paled a little, 
 the cheeks slightly hollowed and the eyes widened by 
 the stress of emotion. She looked as she had looked 
 that day in the park childish, touchingly sensitive 
 and responsive, expectant. Michael had compared 
 her then to a rose-embowered princess hearing, 
 without certainty, beyond the confines of her garden, 
 the first bugle-call. . . . 
 
 As the cab ran again into duskiness, Michael bent 
 more nearly over her and kissed her temple. She 
 quickly raised her face and her lips answered his 
 fervently. 
 
 She had awakened. But the fear of awakening had 
 been a madness, one of the mockeries of broken and 
 evil dreams. Love was a great peace : it came 
 bringing the irresponsibility of a saint who has been 
 lifted into ecstasy, of a child knowing neither good 
 nor evil. Marriage had made her feel horribly old : 
 but Love flung aside the solemn frivolities of customs 
 and duties and romped rapturously with the eternal 
 young soul within. She felt as if the struggle were 
 over : nothing else mattered : there were no doubts, 
 no questions, no marvellings. She knew that Love 
 transcended all laws. 
 
 " When will I see you again ? " Michael said, 
 smiling, at the door in Ainslie Street. 
 
 " I'll come next night," Drusilla said, and went in. 
 She realised that she had not confessed anything, 
 had not explained anything : nothing seemed to 
 demand confession or explanation. The only thing 
 that mattered was to sit beside Michael and to feel 
 his lips meet hers. Eternity could give nothing 
 better, nothing more near to the still glory that was 
 the heart of heaven.
 
 278 THE ROSE-COLOURED ROOM 
 
 II 
 
 She had gone to all the meetings of the Eire Club 
 since October. She had not a clear recollection of 
 how Tunstall had stopped seeing her home and Michael 
 had taken his place. 
 
 In both of their hearts now all the life converged 
 towards those few hours ; especially towards that 
 night hour of home-coming. Michael did not know 
 how to be furtive : he would have said to himself 
 wildly that there was nothing to cause scandal. He 
 loved Drusilla and she loved him ; purely, patiently, 
 steadfastly : they were not going to do any wrong to 
 themselves or to Cowie. . . . Sometimes, in their 
 eagerness, they left the club early, so that they might 
 have a longer time together : sometimes, on reaching 
 Ainslie Street, they walked away past Cowie's house. 
 A cold supper was always set on Thursday nights and 
 Alick, if he came in before Drusilla, would be quite 
 comfortable. . . . 
 
 Michael was determined not to wrong Cowie. He 
 knew that he loved Drusilla and that she loved him : 
 they would love each other always. . . . Once or 
 twice, suddenly remembering the theory that the 
 soul's love can exist without physical expression, 
 Michael had been about to part from her without 
 kissing her. But she clung to him, lifting her faee. 
 . . . That made it difficult. Impossible, in fact. 
 
 Everything about her now made it difficult made it 
 impossible ! There was wonderfully little speech, or 
 need of speech, between them ; but she had told him, in 
 fragments, truths about her life, making him groan and 
 curse his own blindness. She tried to be very honest. 
 
 " I wanted things too that was a reason. You
 
 THE ROSE-COLOURED ROOM 279 
 can't know how much I wanted things ... I hate 
 anything ugly. At home it was not possible to keep 
 oneself really nice. . . . Men like you care more 
 about ideas : they don't know how much women 
 want things." Her voice sank shamefully. All these 
 astonishing piteous little wants, when he placed them 
 side by side with her family's distresses, made her 
 seem to him all the purer, the sweeter and nobler. He 
 did not understand them at all as Cowie had done. 
 
 " Yes, I did ! yes, I did ! I think I cared for 
 you nearly from the beginning. ... It doesn't 
 matter now," Drusilla added with quivering laughter. 
 
 In truth it did not seem to matter. When they 
 were together it was as if time were blotted out ; as 
 if they always had been, and always would be so. 
 Drusilla did not flee from the thought of Cowie, nor 
 suffer much remorse at knowing that he came and went 
 deceived. His vivid, strong personality seemed to 
 have faded suddenly into a phantom-shape coming 
 and going. 
 
 But Michael thought of Cowie thought of him 
 more and more as his own desires took more and more 
 solid forms on the plane on which Cowie habitually 
 moved. It was growing more and more difficult 
 not to want to take her away from Cowie to take 
 her in her wrongs and tendernesses and weaknesses ; 
 to take her in her loveliness. . . . 
 
 He did want to take her. Every time now that 
 he left her at her door there rose up the intolerable 
 vision of the hushed house and of her and Cowie 
 within. Her soul was his in love oh, it was all very 
 well to say that ! He hated the sacrilege of Cowie 
 taking in his arms the form that held the soul. The 
 owner of the treasure had surely a right to the casket.
 
 280 THE ROSE-COLOURED ROOM 
 
 . . . He fought with the thought, but it sprang up 
 again and again, like an immortal monster. 
 
 Oh, God forbid that he should destroy the life of 
 this man who loved her ! God forbid that he should 
 make her to share in this cruelty ! . . . The struggle 
 had entered into the citadel of his heart and there 
 angels fought with devils. . . . He prayed when he 
 was alone that help might come " from the other 
 side " ; that in some way, by the intervention of 
 powers stronger than he, the life of Alexander Cowie 
 might be saved from ruin. Sometimes he could attain 
 to prayer so fierce, so importunate, so selfless, that it 
 seemed an answer must come. . . . But when he was 
 with Drusilla he knew that Love could do no wrong ; 
 that Love pronounces absolution of all ills wrought to 
 others for the sake of the beloved. 
 
 Ill 
 
 " There's a business meeting to-night," Racie said 
 sourly to Michael on the third of April. " You'll have 
 to be 
 
 Their eyes met and the impact struck coldly on 
 them. Racie's look said : " You'd better not see her 
 home : people are beginning to pass remarks." Oh, 
 Michael knew just the kind of conventional thought 
 that Racie would have. Always deferring to people's 
 prejudices, yet feigning contempt of his kind. 
 
 Michael ran out into Burke Place after Drusilla. 
 In the violet sky there was a great round moon, 
 apricot-hued, burning, beautiful. 
 
 " I'll have to stay for that blessed business meeting 
 -we'll not get home together. . . . Let me see you 
 to the car."
 
 THE ROSE-COLOURED ROOM 281 
 
 " Isn't it a divine night ? " Drusilla said reluctantly, 
 and they walked slowly round Burke Place before 
 they went to the car station. They smiled into each 
 other's eyes, joyously excited in snatching these 
 moments in the dark square, under the violet sky. 
 Michael drew her into the shadow of a pillared doorway 
 and kissed her : the passion in his eyes made her gaze 
 falter. 
 
 " I love you. . . . Say you love me." 
 
 " Yes," Drusilla said. What did it matter if the 
 red-faced woman stared at them as they went away 
 together, or the lean woman, in her eternal and evil- 
 smelling sables, fell on their case as her prey ? To 
 Drusilla the lean woman appeared no longer as a 
 horror, a sordid kind of wolf, worrying, crunching, 
 savouring. She was now only an ill-dressed woman, 
 piteous in having entered the world in vain. For no 
 man had loved her : she had never walked in the 
 violet solitude with a man whom God had sent with 
 a message to her. 
 
 With this perhaps unwarranted conviction, Drusilla 
 was able quite gently to move the images of these two 
 women into the background of her mind. They 
 mattered no more than did her past miseries and 
 mistakes and what evils might be to come. She 
 parted from Michael at the car and he ran back, 
 breathless, to the club-rooms. 
 
 When he entered, Racie and Tunstall were seated 
 at the green table, and the room was filled with an 
 atmosphere of something wrong. 
 
 " Mr. TunstalFs stayed because he helped me a good 
 deal with the club business while you were away," 
 Racie said in his quiet voice. " As you know, we feel 
 it's time we went into this, though it's unpleasant."
 
 282 THE ROSE-COLOURED ROOM 
 
 " What's the matter ? " Michael asked harshly and 
 quickly. His thoughts had darted to Drusilla and the 
 insolent mouth of the lean woman in sables : let them 
 take care what they said ! 
 
 But he saw that Racie and Tunstall were surprised 
 by his white face. 
 
 " It's about the accounts," Racie said in a nau- 
 seated tone. " Better sit down, Mick. The accounts 
 and tilings. Patullo's not here of course : how many 
 nights is it since he's been here ? " 
 
 "Five now," Tunstall said. " No four. Not 
 since our last public lecture." 
 
 " These have been coming in," Racie said, laying 
 his hand on a heap of papers on the table. " Some 
 of them came to Mr. Tunstall and some to me." He 
 lifted one of the bills and showed it to Michael. 
 " You remember, of course, Mick, Patullo got money 
 to pay all these ? Then, there were the ads. of the 
 lectures in the various papers. They made such a fuss 
 about it at The Mercury I paid it myself." 
 
 " Of course ! " Michael said, furious. " Rather 
 than apply to me." 
 
 " You can give it back to me," Racie said, with his 
 dry side-glance. " About the money taken for tickets 
 for the lectures : we find none of it's been banked. 
 There isn't a penny down to the credit of the Mission." 
 
 " You didn't say anything to Miss Morland ? " 
 Michael panted. 
 
 Racie laughed and an emotional look warmed his 
 face. 
 
 " No, I didn't, Mick," he said. He and Tunstall 
 exchanged a quizzical glance : it was so characteristic 
 of Michael Quentin to consider anything but the 
 money.
 
 THE ROSE-COLOURED ROOM 283 
 
 " It's a blue do," Tunstall said. 
 
 " You mean ? " 
 
 " I mean he's been robbing you all along the line. 
 The accounts haven't been kept at all : we'd no 
 balance-sheet at the end of the year. . . . Never 
 heard of such a thing. . . . But Mr. Moore said you 
 said Mr. Patullo wasn't to be bothered. Question is, 
 how long's it to go on ? He's drinking himself to 
 death, and you've only been helping him to commit 
 suicide." 
 
 Tunstall's harsh voice and flushed face seemed 
 horrible to Michael. So did the papers on the table, 
 remorseless indelicate things with their incriminating 
 dates and figures. It was as if Patullo himself were 
 laid there, exposed in all his misery to a glare of light 
 and eyes that did not pity. Michael flushed in an 
 anguish of shame. 
 
 " We've written to him several times," Racie said 
 with downcast eyes. " He answered once, as you 
 know, after Clancy's lecture, saying he was coming 
 along next night to square up. But, as you know, 
 he didn't come. . . . What are you going to 
 do?" 
 
 " I'll go out and see him myself," Michael said 
 suddenly. Tunstall grinned. 
 
 " He'll get round you, Mr. Quentin." 
 
 " I'm quite willing that he should," Michael said, 
 in an out-flash of scorn. " I'll go to-night," he said 
 to Racie. " Give me those bills." 
 
 He crushed them together and squashed them into 
 his pocket. Racie surmised that he would lose half 
 of them and forget to pay the other half till they were 
 sent again with threats. 
 
 " Never mind," Michael said ragefully. He turned
 
 284 THE ROSE-COLOURED ROOM 
 
 at the door : " Mr. Tunstall, I can count on you not 
 to speak about this ? " 
 
 Tunstall had already spoken to nearly everybody 
 in the club but what was the good of telling Michael 
 Quentin that ? Patullo had long ago been described 
 by the red-faced woman as an Open Sore. Tunstall 
 acquiesced with a grin that was half mocking, half 
 shame-faced ; and Michael went off. Racie dashed 
 after him and silently accompanied him to the garage. 
 
 " You'd better ask him to resign, Mick," Racie said 
 gently, as the car started. " You can do that quite 
 . . . pleasantly." 
 
 " Yes," Michael agreed. He was glad that he had 
 five thousand a year : certainly it made it easier to 
 set things right. He would settle those bills and bank 
 a sum for the Eire Club Mission. . . . His face had 
 whitened at Tunstall's cruel description of his attempt 
 to help Patullo. Racie wasn't such a brute : he felt 
 rather grateful to Racie for being different. Still, 
 Racie had been rather a beast to him of late with those 
 suspicious, resentful glances. Conventional ! 
 
 He had neglected poor old Patullo. Yes ; it must 
 have been this sense of his fading interest that had 
 prevented Patullo from asking. ... It was extra- 
 ordinary how love sucked in one's energies. He had 
 let himself lose sight of Patullo had got tired of the 
 job. Racie had the ah- of believing that he never 
 stuck to anything, that he always gave way. A man 
 with that bitter want of faith in one's enthusiasms 
 must do much to keep the world from progressing. 
 He was always trying to take the shine out of things 
 to blot the colour and radiance of life into a lying 
 half-light of grey depressedness. . . . Poor old Racie I 
 He wasn't such a brute as the contemptuous Tunstall,
 
 THE ROSE-COLOURED ROOM 285 
 
 not such a brute as that lean woman kite-like in her 
 rusty robes. Michael answered their jeering dis- 
 approval with an out-flare of scorn. After all, the 
 money was his, he could do as he pleased. What did 
 it matter if they found him a fool ? He had a counter- 
 charge to fling in their faces. He imagined himself 
 saying to them : 
 
 " There's nothing more foolish than to have no 
 pity." 
 
 He got down at Twenty-three Lochaber Gardens ; 
 and as he stood, pausing at the foot of the stairs, 
 there flashed into his mind a vision of a rose-coloured 
 room. 
 
 A rose-coloured room such as Rollo had imagined. 
 The picture of it came to Michael fresh and vivid as 
 if it were flashed from Rollo's mind into his. The 
 walls of the room showed faintly flushed with, on the 
 white frieze, an austere pattern of thorny branches 
 such as diapered the harled walls of The Corner House. 
 In the centre of the white floor there was a carpet of 
 a soft dim hue between pink and purple. Precious 
 vases, filled with roses, glimmered here and there, and 
 a cluster of shaded lights hung from the ceiling 
 softly green as Rollo had said the ceiling of a sleeping- 
 room ought to be. In his vision of the room he saw it 
 at night ; and long silk curtains, embroidered with 
 rose and brown and gold, mildly green, fell over the 
 windows and the doorways. . . . There was no room 
 for a crucifix in the room let the shuddersome, dead 
 unreal thing remain in the white phantom studio 
 above ! There was no room for prayer nor for struggle : 
 none for pity. Only Love was there in a divine 
 egotism transcending all laws. 
 
 The red-cheeked Cartwright boy who lived below
 
 286 THE ROSE-COLOURED ROOM 
 
 the Trathbyes, came upstairs whistling and carrying 
 a string-bag full of potatoes. He stared at Michael 
 standing there, thinking; passed him and, turning, 
 stared down at him from between the posts of the 
 banisters. The boy's eyes seemed in danger of 
 falling out ; and Michael, haled out of his dream into 
 a consciousness that was a mingling of annoyance and 
 sarcastic amusement, went up to the top flat and 
 rang Patullo's bell. 
 
 There followed that long pause which is one of the 
 signs of social misery. Michael knew that he would 
 have to wait while Patullo apologised to a pupil, or 
 sent the charwoman out of the parlour, or put away 
 a bottle of whisky. But he rang again, partly because 
 he was not patient, and partly because he had been 
 made nervous by the boy's goggling eyes. 
 
 Patullo opened the door. It was awful to bring 
 that look of terror into a human face. ... In his 
 shame that this man should fear him Michael spoke in 
 a rush, stammering : 
 
 " It's all right. . . . Mr. Patullo, may I come in ? 
 I'm awfully sorry I've taken so long to come to look 
 you up. . . . Perhaps you've a pupil ? " 
 
 " No ; I've no pupils now," Patullo said. He still 
 held the door as if to keep Michael out. 
 
 " Are you alone ? " Michael asked, a new anxiety 
 
 besetting him. If Patullo's wife were there ? Miss 
 
 Morland had described her repeatedly as a terrible 
 person with a shock head of hair. The interior of 
 the house, behind Patullo's shrinking figure, seemed to 
 yawn cave-like ; and Michael felt wrathfully conscious 
 of the cruelty and insolence of a society that hunted a 
 poor quarry like this and dug him out of his den. 
 
 " It's all right just if you're alone, Mr. Patullo
 
 THE ROSE-COLOURED ROOM 287 
 
 it's quite all right. I can come back any time you 
 like 
 
 " I'm alone," Patullo said suddenly, with a swallow- 
 ing movement that sucked in his thin discoloured 
 cheeks. 
 
 It was absurd to see a man in such a state for want 
 of a few pounds. 
 
 Michael followed him into the stuffy flat ; murmur- 
 ing pitifully : 
 
 " It's all right, Mr. Patullo. . . . I'm going to 
 make it all right. . . ." 
 
 Five thousand a year. He felt glad of it. 
 
 IV 
 
 " Well, I'm off, old girl ! " Cowie called. It was 
 Sunday morning and he was going to church with his 
 mother and sisters. Cowie had recently engaged two 
 seats for himself and his wife. 
 
 " Because I think we ought to pay our way," he 
 explained with his pioneer air, " I can't accept the 
 dogmas of the Church : but I think there's a great 
 deal to be said for the fellowship of its members. 
 There's no two doubts it brings you into touch with 
 people. I don't mean just in the matter of getting 
 patients," Cowie went on, with an attractive laugh 
 and blush. He added diffidently, with an emotional 
 moistening of his eyes : " Mother was talking about it 
 the other evening, Dillie, when you and Aggie were 
 washing up in the kitchen. . . . There's a lot in what 
 Mother says sometimes though she's not intellectual 
 or littery. . . . She was saying it's others we've got 
 to think of in a thing like this : she said supposing 
 we had youngsters that went wrong and in the future
 
 288 THE ROSE-COLOURED ROOM 
 
 we felt like reproaching ourselves because we hadn't 
 started them fair " 
 
 Though she was in daily contact with Alick's view 
 of her Drusilla could not absorb it : the most she 
 could do was to refrain from repelling it. Each time 
 that he left her there was the sense of retiring with 
 her real self to resume the thoughts that his presence 
 had interrupted. He and his hopes and interests 
 moved on the outermost confines of her life : he could 
 not even surmise the existence of an inner chamber to 
 which he had no key. He loved her, he was content. 
 
 Drusilla, standing in her open bay window where 
 boxes of blossomed daffodils thrilled in the April 
 sunlight, heard all around her the clangour of church 
 bells. She watered the flowers slowly, watching the 
 drops shine in the sun ; her senses taking pleasure in 
 the colour, in the odours of the damped clay and the 
 yellow petals, in the bright Sunday atmosphere of 
 the street. Between the waves of the bells' sounds 
 she could hear the scurr of feet on the footpaths, the 
 squawking of a gramophone in one of the neighbouring 
 flats, and the intense " Tick-tick-tick-tick-tick " of 
 a motor-cycle round the corner. 
 
 The bells stopped. The young Frenchwoman from 
 the flat above came downstairs, issued from the close 
 wheeling a bassinet. She looked up at Drusilla, 
 waving her hand, crying out that she and the baby 
 were going to spend the sunny morning in the park. 
 She wore a new hat that was a mass of pale and dark 
 violets. 
 
 " Are you not come wit us ? " 
 
 " No," Drusilla called, smiling. " I stayed in to 
 get Alick's dinner." 
 
 But she still lingered, idle, in the bay-window.
 
 THE ROSE-COLOURED ROOM 289 
 
 Many mothers and fathers, wheeling baby-carriages, 
 came from closes all along the street ; for the place 
 was full of young couples. Persons with dogs, too, 
 began to walk about in the pleasant stillness, and little 
 boys and girls with toy horses and motors. 
 
 Drusilla, moving a little into the room, saw herself 
 reflected, sun-bathed, in a mirror her lovely hair, 
 her white neck and blue Magyar robe inset with 
 Oriental embroidery. She thought of her overall 
 hanging on the kitchen door, and of the red Sunday 
 joint not yet in the oven. 
 
 She put her hand to the bosom of her dress. Michael 
 Quentin's letter was in there, lying warm and deeply 
 hidden. 
 
 Michael had written it from The Corner House. 
 He had gone down to Ayrshire, light-hearted, on the 
 morning following his comforting interview with old 
 Patullo. 
 
 She was afraid. ... To go with Michael would be 
 like Death a great splendour but a great terror. 
 It would mean a rending and snapping of all her 
 earthly ties ; and while the spirit found the going easy 
 the flesh felt shame and fear. She must fling away all 
 her respect for custom, for righteousness, and re- 
 spectability : she must flout the vows that she had 
 taken at her wedding : she must have done with all 
 her friendships : she must give hostages to the en- 
 vious ; must fulfil the grievous prophecies of her 
 mother and Aunt Caroline that her lack of restraint 
 (where men were concerned) would bring disgrace on 
 them all. She must renounce the hope of finding 
 lovers for Essie and Kathleen : she must creep for ever 
 out of the fond motherly arms of Mrs. Cowie, out of 
 Aggie's great hugging hold. . . . She must shatter
 
 290 THE ROSE-COLOURED ROOM 
 
 Alick's life into a thousand amazements and disgraces. 
 . . . He did not ask much : it was so easy to content 
 him with imitations. 
 
 If Michael or this force which had absorbed both 
 her and Michael would only take her take her, 
 overwhelmed, helpless, blind, deaf, unreasoning, 
 unblamed ! It was outrageous, it was inquisitorial, 
 it was ludicrous, that she and he should have their 
 hearts swept through by this flaming whirlwind while 
 their brains were left clear for thought and their feet 
 and hands obedient to their wills. ... Or if her 
 dilemma spelt simply this : on the one side her married 
 life, on the other side Michael Quentin, each eternally 
 to be lost or won. Ah, how easy it would be then to 
 decide ! But (her timidity argued) to keep her fair 
 name and to do no wrong to her husband, did not mean 
 to lose Michael Quentin. He was hers. Let them 
 wait what matter how long Death was of coming ? 
 She knew well that she did not want to die that life 
 hardly seemed sorrowful. The maidenly romantic 
 part of her left unsatisfied by Cowie's eagerness to 
 matronise her turned not unwillingly to a future of 
 snatched meetings and subtle communings. . . . 
 
 The door bell rang a pneumatic bell with a start- 
 ling " birrrr ! " The servant was at church and 
 Drusilla went to the door, expecting a mistaken 
 milk-boy. 
 
 Miss Morland was at the door. 
 " Can I come in ? ... Have you heard ? " 
 " No : what's wrong ? " Drusilla said. " Come in." 
 They went into the parlour and Miss Morland looked 
 round it as her habit was on entering a room. Drusilla 
 ran into the kitchen to put the meat into the gas- oven, 
 then returned, pink-cheeked in her blue robe.
 
 THE ROSE-COLOURED ROOM 291 
 
 " Mr. Patullo's dead," Grace said. She looked so 
 ghastly that Drusilla did not attempt to exclaim or 
 pity : she waited for what was to come, watching 
 Grace undo her black bearskin stole, which she had 
 evidently put on hurriedly over a meagre stained 
 house-frock. 
 
 " Ah ... I thought you might know. Your 
 mother heard it." 
 
 "Heard ?" 
 
 " The shot," Grace said. " He shot himself." 
 
 "Oh ... Grace ! The poor man . . ." 
 
 Grace looked with a kind of pleased interest at 
 Drusilla's tears : there was expressed in the glance 
 something of a dramatic artist's gratitude to a 
 comprehending house. 
 
 " I don't know how much you know," Grace said. 
 " I wonder if you guessed anything. . . . Nobody did, 
 I think. I'm not the kind of person people talk about, 
 and then I was so popular at the Eire. . . . And of 
 course it seemed unlikely, he was so much older. . . . 
 It's very nice in here, but it's jolly cold." 
 
 Drusilla shut the windows. Grace was bending 
 over the fire, newly lit and crackling. The sunlight, 
 touching her sideways, showed the lined flaccid face, 
 the blighted hair on her temples. 
 
 "I loved him, "Grace said desperately. . . . "There 
 was never anything wrong between us. . . . When 
 I went to him in the old days I knew I should love 
 him. There was always a strong sympathy between 
 us : we had such a lot of things in common. It was 
 quite a psychic thing from the first. ... I saw from 
 the first he was wretched with that woman : she was 
 of quite a different class, uneducated and all that, 
 you know used to come into the room in a petticoat
 
 292 THE ROSE-COLOURED ROOM 
 
 or with a lump of something in her mouth, you know. 
 . . . She was most frightfully jealous." 
 
 " Of you ? " 
 
 " Oh, my dear, yes," Miss Morland said, complacent. 
 She fell into a muse, staring in front of her with her 
 fine eyes, blank like the eyes of a sick animal. . . . 
 " I declare it's so strange to think of him lying dead 
 there. Your mother heard the shot." 
 
 " I know you said that. Why did he ? " 
 
 " Oh, he left such a pathetic letter : so awfully 
 pathetic. . . . Mrs. Ross that's his charwoman 
 came to look for me this morning : she knew we were 
 such friends. She went hi to get his breakfast for 
 him as usual . . . and she found him . . . lying over 
 the table with the pistol in his poor hand." 
 
 " Oh Grace ! . . . " Drusilla said, sobbing. 
 
 " He'd left a letter for Mick Quentin," Grace said. 
 " I took it round to Mick's lodgings but he wasn't there 
 he's in Ayrshire. I opened the letter I know 
 Mick won't mind, he and I are such chums. See, 
 here it is." 
 
 Drusilla, shudderingly, saw that a corner of the 
 envelope was dimpled where a drop of Patullo's blood 
 had fallen on it. 
 
 " Oh, I can't look at it I don't want to read it 
 I don't think I should." 
 
 " Of course you're not so intimate with Mick," 
 Miss Morland said absently, and again sat gazing in 
 front of her. ..." Mr. Patullo had got the club 
 money all wrong, and it couldn't be concealed any 
 longer. Mick had gone to him some days before and 
 been nice to him said he'd hush it all up and all that 
 sort of thing, you know. . . . Mr. Patullo says in the 
 letter he could have borne being imprisoned, but he
 
 THE ROSE-COLOURED ROOM 293 
 
 couldn't bear Mick finding it out and being so kind 
 to him. He said the shame of having failed after 
 what Mick had done for him was simply eating into 
 him ; and he brooded over it and brooded over it 
 and ... " 
 
 " He was awfully sensitive," Drusilla said pitifully. 
 
 " Rather 1 Why, my dear child, you don't know," 
 Grace said with a kind of anger. " Nobody but I 
 knows what that man has had to suffer. . . . That 
 woman was simply awful. . . . You know she killed 
 all his children well, it's the same thing, she let them 
 die of neglect. He'd have been a most devoted father 
 if he'd had a chance. . . . Why, she followed him 
 about from place to place and disgraced him before 
 people. ... I say, did you ever see her ? " 
 
 " Of course not," Drusilla said. " Don't talk 
 about her. . . . Tell me about you and him. I want 
 to know." 
 
 " We never did anything wrong," Miss Morland 
 said. " I waited. I don't pretend I didn't hope she 
 would die she was lower than a beast. Why 
 shouldn't I wish it ? " Grace's voice coarsened as 
 Drusilla had noticed it did when expressive of strong 
 emotion : she seemed suddenly to shake herself free 
 of reserves and pretences : her speech, her gestures, 
 and appearance were those of a woman of the people, 
 and with her sincerity came a sort of grandeur. She 
 had risen and stood now erect, now bending with her 
 arms on the back of a chair ; not shedding tears, but 
 every now and then wiping her lips with a crumpled 
 handkerchief. The very dishevelment of her dress, 
 the neglected greyed hair, contributed curiously to 
 giving her a sort of majesty. Daintinesses would have 
 been as much out of place on her as on a big-framed
 
 294 THE ROSE-COLOURED ROOM 
 
 statue moulded by a realistic artist to express plebeian 
 sorrow. Drusilla, listening in a vivid excitement to 
 the broken misery-weighted fragments of her talk, 
 visualised the scenes of the drama. She saw Miss 
 Morland's bedroom in the big respectable west -end 
 house, dark even on such a sunny morning ; saw the 
 streets, almost empty, through which Grace hurried 
 with the charwoman ; saw Patullo's parlour and felt 
 its heavy sour odours of tobacco, of whisky, of meals 
 cooked greasily by Mrs. Ross in the kitchen across the 
 tiny hall ; saw the hotly red walls, the red-brown 
 woodwork, the jostling, huddling wreckage of the big 
 pieces of furniture, their mahogany or walnut surfaces 
 sticky and dull, pitted and scratched. She saw the 
 crimson- tiled hearth spattered with last night's ashes ; 
 and at the table littered with papers, Patullo with his 
 face down and the pistol in his piteous small hand ; 
 dead of shame because another man had been kind 
 to him. 
 
 " Oh, poor man ! " Drusilla sobbed. *' Oh, poor 
 Grace . . . you poor thing." 
 
 " I wish we hadn't waited," Grace said. " He 
 always kept on saying we must wait. ... It was all 
 very well for him to say that : he never wanted me so 
 much as I did him. I used to be glad I loved him 
 more I'm not so sure now. ... I wonder how it 
 could have been worse for either of us than things as 
 they've been. I dare say people have thought I'd 
 done wrong : I'm sure they have at the club : they 
 don't like me . . . and, do you know, Drusilla, I was 
 in a family as nursery-governess at first and they 
 wouldn't keep me ? I'm sure now it was that. . . . 
 I wonder what good I got by doing nothing wrong. 
 Why, I mayn't even go and look at his body again
 
 THE ROSE-COLOURED ROOM 295 
 if that creature comes and chooses to deny me 
 the house. . . . And look what my life's been, 
 Dillie." 
 
 " Oh . . . ' Drusilla was crouched on the fender- 
 stool, her face hidden. 
 
 " It's broken me all up. ... It's made me so 
 frightfully old. . . . You don't know what it means, 
 child, to be all alone all your life not to have a single 
 person you can speak to ... and to see your life, 
 and your youth, and any looks and spirits you had, 
 all going away from you. ... I cut myself off from 
 my own people chiefly on his account, you know : 
 I didn't want him to know exactly what their social 
 position was : I was afraid he might come to be 
 ashamed of me if that creature died and we got 
 married, you know. She had something wrong with 
 her, you know ; and that with her habits . . . Isn't 
 it extraordinary to think that she's alive and he's 
 dead ? She was younger, of course, but no one would 
 ever have known that. ... Of course I was young 
 when I did that : I didn't know how the thing was 
 going to turn out. . . . Then, when I tried to see 
 something of my people again, later, I found they 
 shrank from me. It was like that everywhere. All 
 the societies and classes and things I joined I seemed 
 to get left. The girls seemed all to get into cliques 
 and conspired to leave me out. . . . Do you know, 
 you're the only girl I know who seemed to want to 
 keep on seeing me ? ... If I'd lost my character 
 I don't see how I could have been ostracised more. 
 Even if a woman were to be damned at once for doing 
 that, how's it worse than being damned by degrees ? 
 To go on hungering and hungering. . . . He'd got 
 tired of me himself."
 
 296 THE ROSE-COLOURED ROOM 
 
 Miss Morland rose, glancing at Drusilla's wedding- 
 gift clock in its Connemara marble case. 
 
 " I say, I must be going. ... I say, when does 
 your husband come in ? ... Oh yes, it's Sunday 
 of course. I'm going back to him. He looks so 
 awfully peaceful, Dillie : you can see what an awfully 
 delicate, refined sort of face he had before. . . . Oh, 
 I hope that creature won't have got the news and 
 come to the house ! " Yet there was a strain of 
 longing in Grace's voice, a horrible harridan-like 
 desire to meet her enemy over the body of the man 
 who had been dear to them both. 
 
 " Your mother was very kind," Grace said, lifting 
 the heavy bearskin stole. " She asked me to come in, 
 and wanted to make me a cup of tea." 
 
 " Mother's always kind to people in trouble," 
 Dmsilla said proudly. " Do go in when you go back 
 you'll be worn out, you poor thing." She came 
 close to Grace, arranging the fur on her shoulders, 
 clasping it at her neck ; then drew down the woman's 
 head, kissing and stroking her face. The muscles of 
 Grace's mouth worked, but the exhausted heart could 
 not overflow in a great flood of emotion : its energies 
 had for too long been drained away in driblets. 
 
 Love, with its fairy-like simplicity, showed Grace 
 Morland to Drusilla as an unhappy woman who had 
 entered a room and seen the man she loved lying dead. 
 That was really why Drusilla pitied her and held her 
 warmly and kissed her. The man was dead, and the 
 poor woman had never given nor received happiness. 
 To come into a room and find the man you loved 
 lying dead and to know that you had not made him 
 happy . . . 
 
 Drusilla moved to the window and watched the
 
 THE ROSE-COLOURED ROOM 297 
 
 slouching figure go swinging down the street. Here 
 and there a trim Sunday figure paused, half turned, 
 to gaze at the disordered dress and walk. 
 
 Oh, she knew now why Grace had come to her ! 
 The egotism of her love seized on this broken wasted 
 life as material for its own uses. It cried out that the 
 ugly tale had been told as a warning, bidding her no 
 longer hesitate. There was time yet time for rescue, 
 time for joy, time for her happiness and Michael's. 
 What matter if Love's path led her into a strange wild 
 lawless country wherein the desires of gods seemed 
 earthly as the desires of men ? The road of respect- 
 ability, with its lying sign-posts, was cluttered with 
 shameful ruins. There was no real failure anywhere, 
 except the loss of Love : there was no sin save the 
 evil dream of a life without Love. 
 
 Drusilla went to the writing-table and wrote to 
 Michael : 
 
 " Dearest Mick, I will come with you whenever 
 you tell me. 
 
 " DRUSILLA." 
 
 She went to her new wardrobe and put on one of 
 her dainty coats and big hats. She smiled at her 
 reflection in the glass. Not Mrs. Cowie, but Drusilla 
 who had awakened : she had never really been Cowie' s 
 wife. In the sunny awakening the dream showed 
 smoke-like, grotesque, frail, a thing without grief or 
 terror. Nothing in her life had ever been real except 
 Michael. Nothing anywhere was real, or worthy of 
 serious consideration, except Love. 
 
 She went down the bright street and dropped the 
 letter into a pillar-box.
 
 298 THE ROSE-COLOURED ROOM 
 
 A scaffolding reared above The Corner House showed 
 where the rose-coloured room was being built. Around, 
 the trees, afire with greens, thrilled and rang all day 
 with the bridal songs of birds. 
 
 Michael Quentin was coming and going among 
 filings of wood and stones and sand and groups of 
 workmen ; as Alick Cowie had come and gone nearly 
 a year ago. 
 
 Of course there were differences. . . . Cowie, 
 blushing and with a quickened breath, used to dash 
 up, at odd hours of leisure, to seize a sight of the 
 development of a tiny flat, a mere mouse-hole in a 
 tall tenement ; or to snatch at an interview with a 
 coy agent, very much on the defensive. 
 
 Michael, during most of the hours of work, was 
 within call of the builders : they deferred, in a certain 
 measure, to his wishes though they did this less than 
 any one who had not five thousand a year might have 
 supposed. It was not a little white flat that Michael 
 was waiting to see, but a rose-coloured room, a fit 
 habitation for a Maeterlinck princess. 
 
 There were other differences, of course, than the 
 mere financial one of Michael's five thousand and 
 Cowie's four hundred. Michael . . . felt differently 
 from Cowie. . . . Yes : his feelings were different 
 from Cowie's. 
 
 He was going to have a rose-garden made around 
 the long room which was built at an end of the house, 
 behind and at right angles to the violet guest-chamber. 
 There was to be a lawn in the centre of the garden, 
 flanked with rose-alleys, the whole enclosed by trees. 
 Drusilla and he would hardly need to go beyond the
 
 THE ROSE-COLOURED ROOM 299 
 
 confines of his twenty acres : he was going to have it 
 all made so beautiful, so full of delights. He was 
 having a tennis-court made and a croquet-lawn : he 
 was going to buy a steam-yacht, as Drusilla had said 
 that she was afraid of the slippery white kind. They 
 could go long cruises ; and they would have long runs 
 in the motor to woods and hills and rivers and towns 
 and cities to all the fair places that Nature or man 
 had made and that Drusilla had not seen. . . . She 
 had said with her woebegone air, beset by fears, that 
 she wished that the conditions of his mother's will 
 did not compel them to spend the greater part of the 
 year in Scotland. 
 
 " Because of people . . ." Drusilla faltered. 
 
 But wait till she saw ! Michael made her realise, 
 in some measure, how a command over material things 
 enabled people to live almost independently of their 
 neighbours' opinions. Let her picture twenty acres 
 of woodland, of garden and seashore, and every foot 
 of it made fair for the treading of her feet. He was 
 glad of his money. Money could build a fairy palace 
 for Love's abiding and circle it round with barriers 
 that shut out the censuring, staring world ; even with 
 barriers that shut out the world's reason and righteous- 
 ness, its faith, its pity. 
 
 Coming . . . coming ; and all the universe seemed 
 to thrill and throb like a great monster, aeon-slum- 
 bered, moving to the impulse of its awakening. She 
 was coming, and the ground had known it long ago. 
 The trees and the earth were breaking into joy-fires 
 of pure green flame. All the years of their growing 
 had been just for this one spring. All the griefs and 
 bewilderments of Michael's soul, his seemingly sense- 
 less birth and upbringing, his struggles to understand
 
 300 THE ROSE-COLOURED ROOM 
 
 God and to help men, had been lived through so that 
 he might stand with her here, under the trees, on the 
 grass snowed with Bethlehem stars and lighted with 
 celandines. 
 
 And all of The Corner House had been conceived 
 and built so that that rose-coloured room might be 
 added. Rollo had known that. 
 
 As Michael wandered about, returning every now 
 and then within sight of the builders, he constantly 
 imagined Rollo by his side ; so vividly present some- 
 times that (it seemed) a swift wheeling movement 
 must surprise his visible form and compel it to stay. 
 It had not been possible to explain, to the solemn-eyed 
 architect who had complimented him on his clear 
 conception and description of the rose-coloured room, 
 that the thing was not his own, but Rollo's. The 
 architect had not the air of a man who believed in 
 communications " from the other side." 
 
 But Rollo had planned the room long ago (Michael 
 knew) and had kept his idea ready ; foreboding 
 that a day would come when all Michael Quentin's 
 patriotism, all his faith, all his altruism, would be 
 sucked into the fathomless whirlpool of a man's desire 
 for a maiden ; when his immense dream of the design 
 of the universe ring on ring of rejoicing stars peopled 
 by acclaiming hosts of men and angels converging 
 towards a Central Source of Light had shrunk to a 
 dream of the warm perishing petals and the myste- 
 rious bright heart of one little rose. 
 
 Rollo had known that she was coming ; and now 
 it pleased Michael to fancy that Rollo stood by his 
 side watching the builders, wandered with him under 
 the bird-thrilling trees or along the shore ; entered
 
 THE ROSE-COLOURED ROOM 801 
 
 the house with him and sat with him at table, hearing 
 without the voices of the workmen, the clinks and 
 rattlings and blows that told of the gradual materiali- 
 sation of the rose-coloured dream. . . . Once Michael 
 let his fancy play with the thought that Rollo was 
 mounting the stair to the white studio ; and he rose 
 and followed the phantom. 
 
 The roses under the rood had fallen to pieces and 
 lay, a heap of purple and pallid petals. Michael stood 
 staring at the figure on the cross the symbol of his 
 father's faith of humility and self-sacrifice ; his own 
 wildly accepted symbol of altruism. He remembered 
 how he had prayed, agonisedly, that, in this struggle 
 beyond his strength, help might be sent from the 
 other side. 
 
 How glad he was now that no help had come ! 
 
 VI 
 
 Michael was going to take Brasilia to Ireland for 
 the summer, then to return to The Corner House. 
 They had arranged to meet quietly at St. Enoch's 
 station at eleven o'clock on the morning of the twenty- 
 fifth of April. Cowie went to his consulting-rooms in 
 Barrowman's shop at ten. 
 
 On the twenty-fourth Michael came up to Mrs. 
 Wylie's. He had intended to spend the evening with 
 Racie Moore, hoping, in his self-conscious way, that 
 the memory of it would stay with Racie, softening 
 him towards his friend. Michael had even a fantastic 
 thought of telling Racie his purpose. 
 
 " Faith, it would astonish him," Michael thought, 
 smiling : he enjoyed using the expletive " Faith," 
 to which Racie was inclined to deny his right.
 
 302 THE ROSE-COLOURED ROOM 
 
 But his own smile made him realise that it would 
 not be possible to speak of this thing to Racie save 
 with a hideous pretence of lightness. It was because 
 it was to be done earnestly, with a passion of delight, 
 that it would seem abhorrent in Racie's eyes. 
 
 Michael found that he could not spend the evening 
 with his friend : his heart turned from the hypocrisy 
 that it must be. He could not talk to Mrs. Wylie, 
 nor bear her presence in the room as she lingered to 
 give him some particulars regarding the gathering of 
 the beech and pine nuts with which her son Richard 
 covered frames. Richard, it appeared, was thinking 
 of showing something at the Edinburgh Industrial 
 Exhibition. 
 
 " Oh, indeed. Certainly. Indeed he should," 
 Michael said. He wanted to be nice to Mrs. Wylie : 
 there was a quick pang of heart-sickness in the thought 
 that she might refuse to have him staying with her 
 again, no matter how much he paid. . . . Still, she 
 had often spoken of how she depended on his money, 
 and everything might be made right. 
 
 It was a pale blue evening, dry and dusty, and 
 Michael went out and wandered about the streets, 
 wishing that the light would go. Coming back, he 
 lay down in an arm-chair and tried to read. He had 
 bought some cigarettes and he smoked two with a 
 sense of adventure : but they disappointed him by a 
 curious insipidity, nor did they produce the dreamy 
 feelings that he remembered long ago. 
 
 Mrs. Wylie brought supper. 
 
 " I know you've given up wine, Mr. Quentin, ever 
 since you were abroad with poor old Mr. Patullo. 
 But Richard got this bottle specially from a friend 
 that's in Parrott's, the wine-merchants. A glass of
 
 THE ROSE-COLOURED ROOM 303 
 
 it'll do you good : you're looking tired. We mustn't 
 be too hard on the creature comforts," Mrs. Wylie 
 went on with her discreet smile. " There's Bible for 
 it, you know Paul and Timothy, you know, Mr. 
 Quentin." 
 
 " Sure, that was for his stomach's sake," Michael 
 said, laughing. ..." Perhaps it's just my heart 
 that's bothering me." 
 
 " Ah, it's often the stomach when people think it's 
 the heart," Mrs. Wylie said. Then, realising that a 
 gentleman-lodger had jested without the decency of 
 encouragement, she added humorously : " Is that so, 
 indeed, Mr. Quentin ? We're all waiting to hear 
 something of the kind." 
 
 Michael ate and drank ; and the wine, to which he 
 had grown unaccustomed, brought a pleasant blurring 
 of his thoughts. As he lay down he was able to hope 
 that Racie might . . . might . . . The truth was, 
 it was not possible to imagine the thing that Racie 
 might do : but Michael hoped that it might be some- 
 thing not hostile, perhaps not even wholly un- 
 sympathetic. 
 
 As he fell asleep it occurred to him that Alex- 
 ander Cowie might fall in love with some other 
 girl. 
 
 Michael awoke very early and bathed and dressed 
 in water and air of a startling coldness. Exulting in 
 the pure chill, the contest between his running blood 
 and the unsunned air, he stood at his bedroom window 
 to watch the dawn-light which was reflected in lowered 
 tones in the mirror above the chimney-piece. He 
 smiled as the brightness caught the varnished cones, 
 the little rollers of fir-wood with their edentated bark, 
 on Richard's photograph-frames. Michael wondered
 
 304 THE ROSE-COLOURED ROOM 
 
 if some not yet dead sap thrilled within them, remem- 
 bering how dawn came to the woods. 
 
 The stacks and heaps in the wood-yard seemed a 
 great mass of fruity brown-purple, solemnly sombre ; 
 and radiance welled out from behind it, mounting 
 higher and higher, growing more intense. Not a rosy 
 radiance, but a clear amber that keyed up to a gold- 
 white, stainless and searching. The blocks of the 
 buildings and the fine lines of chimneys showed blue- 
 black, and the silent pavements shone. ... A fair 
 day was coming surely the fairest that man ever 
 awaited or gods conceived. 
 
 " But a little cold," Michael thought, smiling. He 
 would shut the window. 
 
 He was weak with cold. An abominable sense of 
 weakness was gripping him. " I've been overdoing 
 it," he thought. " Getting myself run down with all 
 that praying and lying awake and so on. . . . And 
 those stimulants last night I've got out of the way 
 of them. They really lower the vitality finally though 
 for the time they give energy. ..." 
 
 He was amused by the resemblance that this bore 
 to a Food Reform pamphlet. He would shut the 
 window and make some coffee. He jumped on a 
 chair and stood for a minute glorying in the flood of 
 light that streamed down on him. . . . The old- 
 fashioned sash was stiff and he strove to push it 
 upwards. . . . 
 
 Then, sudden, blundering, compassionate, belated, 
 help came from the other side. 
 
 Michael climbed down from the chair and, wavering, 
 sank on his knees beside it.
 
 THE ROSE-COLOURED ROOM 305 
 
 VII 
 
 Brasilia had seen all her flat set in order, and 
 explained to the maid that she might not get back 
 from town in time for early dinner. She had a desire, 
 which (she knew) was purely sentimental in the midst 
 of her ruthlessness, that Alick should eat this one 
 dinner happily. 
 
 She left the house, carrying a hand-bag. She still 
 wore her wedding-ring, her engagement-ring, and the 
 curb bracelet that Cowie had given. She had decided 
 that she must not send these things back to him 
 when she wrote to him. It would have been a cruel, 
 vulgar act, such as women were guilty of in novels 
 and dramas. She did not want to be vulgar and 
 cruel. 
 
 She passed the Frenchwoman's bassinet in the close 
 where, on fine days, it generally stood till evening. 
 On the top of its cosiness there was a blanket which 
 Brasilia herself had embroidered as a neighbourly 
 gift. She looked at it, and at the other familiar 
 objects that she passed, in the hurried, involuntary 
 fashion of a woman who is going for a boat or a train 
 and whose mind is full of little resolves under which, 
 perhaps, pulse sorrows and regrets. 
 
 She walked all the way to the station, moving 
 swiftly and steadily, swinging her hand-bag, a fine 
 colour in her cheeks. As she entered the station, 
 gazing up at the clock, people looked at her and 
 turned their heads to look again. 
 
 She was early, and she went to the bookstall and 
 stood looking at the paper covers displayed ; moving 
 quickly away from any one who came to stand near 
 her, and starting at the sight of every figure that 
 
 u
 
 306 THE ROSE-COLOURED ROOM 
 
 resembled any acquaintance. She told herself that, 
 to-morrow, she would be done for ever with fears of 
 people's doings and sayings. But to-day the door of 
 her soul's prison-house had just clanged behind her 
 and she was still in the shadow of it and quivering 
 with the sound. 
 
 The hands of the clock moved to mark eleven. 
 She was still searching the crowds for Michael's figure 
 with the excited walk, the coat flying open, the 
 ridiculous hair, the eager face. None of the men she 
 saw coming and going not one of the men and 
 women that she had been seeing all her life had a 
 beautiful face like Michael's. They were all dis- 
 coloured by unwholesome habits, seared and furrowed 
 by ignoble cares, beaten into patience by submission 
 to laws. Only Michael had dared to snap the chains 
 so grotesquely brittle that bound her soul and 
 his ; to carry her off to Love's wild lawless country 
 where there was no duty, only delight. What wonder 
 that she and Michael shone, beautiful and young, in 
 a crowd of the mean and the weary ? 
 
 Michael did not come, and the radiance of her mood 
 was dulled. . . . Then fear came. What had hap- 
 pened ? Suddenly she knew that the world, enraged 
 at the exposure of its own stupidity, was her enemy 
 and Michael's. The stupid, false world was ready to 
 fight with violence against people who did what she 
 and Michael were doing. 
 
 She waited till a quarter to twelve : pacing to and 
 fro, gradually less regardful of glances. Then, chilled, 
 almost terrified, with a face that had fallen into 
 lines of fatigue and despondency, she went out 
 of the station, hailed a cab and was driven to Mrs. 
 Wylie's.
 
 THE ROSE-COLOURED ROOM 307 
 
 VIII 
 
 " Oh, miss ..." Mrs. Wylie said. " Oh, miss. . . . 
 I'd knocked twice to tell Mr. Quentin breakfast was 
 ready, and never got an answer ; so thinking to 
 myself there was something wrong, I took the freedom 
 of opening the door, and there was the poor young 
 gentleman kneeling by the chair with the sun pouring 
 down on his head. I did everything I could ... we 
 sent over the road at once for Dr. Gateley ; and he 
 said it was ... no use. Oh, miss . . . I'd sent 
 down to the works for Richard and Jim : Richard's 
 crying like a child in the kitchen now. And we've 
 sent to look for Mr. Moore at The Mercury he wasn't 
 to be found in his rooms. Oh, miss. ... The doctor 
 and I lifted the poor young gentleman on to the bed. 
 The doctor says it was heart failure and no pain 
 and that's a thing to be thankful for, and plain enough 
 from the look of him. He's got the smile of an angel. 
 He was always such a good, nice-behaved young 
 gentleman, Mr. Quentin." 
 
 Mrs. Wylie suddenly sank into silence, and went 
 away, pale and compassionate, as she saw Drusilla 
 turn towards Michael's door. Drusilla had not 
 spoken her name ; and the landlady's thought leaped 
 to the essential part of the truth. 
 
 Drusilla opened the door. Unhappy woman who, 
 entering a room, found the man she loved lying 
 dead ! . . . 
 
 She sat down by the bed and watched Michael. 
 Oh, happy woman who could sit so, alone with him, 
 in the silence ! Happy woman who knew that she 
 had made him happy, that he had died full of joy 
 of her creating ! She wished that she had gone a day
 
 308 THE ROSE-COLOURED ROOM 
 
 earlier, so that, if this were inevitably the day of 
 Michael's death, he might have died in her arms. 
 
 A ring resounded through the quiet house, there 
 were hushed footsteps and voices. Mrs. Wylie tapped. 
 
 " Mr. Moore's come, ma'am he's in the dining- 
 room. He says, may he see you ? " 
 
 Drusilla rose, trembling. The landlady had altered 
 her " miss " to " ma'am." What had Racie Moore 
 said to her ? It was as if the conventions of the 
 world came close to her again, clutching at her throat. 
 
 Racie was standing in the dining-room ; terribly 
 pale, neat in his light overcoat, his crush hat under 
 his arm. He faced her, with eyes full of hostility to 
 this woman who had lured Michael Quentin down to 
 the level of other men. 
 
 " I was to meet him at the station," Drusilla said. 
 " We were going away. He didn't come, so I came 
 here." 
 
 Racie walked to the window and stood, his profile 
 towards her. 
 
 " You'd better go back," he said in his quiet voice. 
 " I'll call a cab for you. . . . You'd better go home." 
 What had she been able to do ? What was the use 
 of blaming her ? His rage of jealousy, seeking the 
 relief of contempt, said that she was only a bundle of 
 " feminine charms." 
 
 " You'd better go home," he repeated in his cold, 
 dry, throaty voice. 
 
 He called a cab. Drusilla looked from its windows 
 at the sunny coloured city, full of spring flowers, of 
 fresh paint and gilding, of the frivolous strife of bread- 
 winning and pleasure-seeking, of meetings and part- 
 ings. She wondered if God had sent an angel 
 down with a flaming sword to save her from destruc-
 
 THE ROSE-COLOURED ROOM 309 
 
 tion. ... Or had her feet taken a firmer hold of 
 Hell? 
 
 She got down at Fifteen Ainslie Street. Odours of 
 cooking came from the tenement : baby-carriages 
 were being wheeled to and fro. As Drusilla stood on 
 the steps, feeling in her purse for silver for the cabman, 
 the sunlight fell about her " tenderly as about a 
 helpless thing."
 
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